Should Tim Duncan have padded his stats?

[GreatWhiteStiff]

I mean I think he certainly could've made some more of his free throws or something maybe. You're acting as if he wasn't putting up ATG offensive stats because he simply chose not to, had too many high in the sky ideals to even consider doing it. He's on the same plane as Jokic, who no longer considers his own efficiency, just nba championships, though Jokic has only won once afaik.

[MaxZaslofskyJr]

Should they have padded someone's cell?

[John Murdoch]

Did he really never win dpoy...wow

[FarBeyondDriven]

I've always liked the inner vs outer scorecard thought experiment. Would you rather be the best lover, but thought as the worst lover by the rest of the world, a loser and hopeless in bed? Or be the worst lover, but seen as the best lover, the man among men?

For basketball, if you have all-time talent you can really manipulate it either way. Would you rather be the most impactful player, no matter how you're perceived? Or do you want to maximize how you're perceived and win less?

Awhile back I asked what Bill Russell needed to do to be seen as the clear GOAT. The general view was that he needed better stats and worse teammates. I think the same is true for Duncan. They wanted to be the best lover, and were seen as the worst. Duncan was the true MVP every year he won, but he was happy to let his teammates share the glory and boost their confidence.

Just like Jerry Krause got exposed after Jordan left, Pop and RC Buford are getting exposed after Duncan left. Each season it gets more and more embarrassing.

The funny thing about NBA stat discussions is that people try to talk stats without understanding independent and dependent variables. AKA how a player gets stats affects how their teammates play. It's like how Brunson magically had a "breakout season" after leaving Luka, instead of the obvious: Luka inhibited Brunson.

Duncan could've easily exploited this blindness, and maximized his own stats. Sure he might only win 3-4 rings. But if he made his teammates serve him instead of serve his teammates, he could easily inflate his stats. Instead of shooting the tough shots, make some scapegoat lower his TS%. Make practice about maximizing his impact, so the team plays worse with him on the bench. Best of all, his teammates would have worse stats too, so his fans could say he has no help.

In this reality we would believe Duncan's teammates sucked. It was San Antonio's fault for not surrounding him with good players. Duncan had no lottery picks, no big free agent signings. Besides Charles Barkley, who would sign in San Antonio? He inherited a team of aging chokers, and when he left his team collapsed after a year.

If you look at the 2014 Spurs, this lineup looks garbage on paper. You put Duncan's lineup around a number of other "GOATS" who would maximize their stats and make their teammates play worse, and the narrative would look instead like this:

38 y/o Duncan - What can you expect from a guy this old, it's a miracle he's even getting numbers at all.
32 y/o Parker - Got old, past his prime
22 y/o Kawhi - kid
36 y/o Ginobili - Corpse of Manu Ginobili
32 y/o Diaw - Obese
26 y/o Green - No help, chokes
29 y/o Splitter - Bum
25 y/o Mills - Who?

Instead they won with the most embarrassing finals blowout, but Duncan didn't get the deserved FMVP.

Did Duncan make the right choice?

I agree with a lot of what you're saying except for the 2014 Spurs were not garbage on paper. Parker was past his prime but still a top 10 point guard. Kawhi was pretty much a finished product coming into the league and he was already in his 3rd season and was considered one of the best defenders and young two-way players in the NBA. Kawhi's numbers got better season after season only because his usage steadily increased not because he improved. His advanced stats back this up. Plus they had Ginobili still effective at the tail end of his HOF career and a group of savvy veterans well versed in the system and everyone knew their roles.

Russell wasn't a very skilled player and pales in comparison to so many others in that regard which is why he can't be a serious candidate for GOAT but his impact, rings, and how elite he was at the things he did well still has him deservedly above Duncan.

That brings me to what you're getting at with Duncan and padding stats. He might have been able to score slightly more but it would have been at the likely expense of defense, efficiency and wins. But like Russell, he wasn't very skilled so we're not talking about improving by leaps and bounds. I'm talking maybe 1-2 points more a game. But at what cost? And would that make him suddenly deserving of being in the GOAT discussion? I say no.

The reason why Duncan isn't in the GOAT conversation is because there's been some excellent players that, like Duncan, defined eras that were just varying degrees of better. Duncan belongs with the likes of West, Kobe, Shaq, Hakeem, Havlicek, Erving and Steph. You could argue any of those players can be as high as 8 but I couldn't put any of them higher because the competition is too stiff. I can't imagine anyone ever breaking into the top seven with guys like MJ, Wilt, Kareem, Bird, Magic, Lebron and Russell.

[GregOden]

Most of Ducan's titles are actually pretty suspect through. He beat a .500 Knicks team in a lockout year in which Patrick Ewing had to wear double knee braces to stand upright on the court, and the Spurs still had David Robinson fairly close to his prime. They had two other titles against two of the weakest Finals teams ever in Kidd's Nets and Lebron's crappy Cavs team when Bron was still in diapers. The knock on ranking Duncan in top 5 will always be that he got dominated in the same conference by another big man in Shaq, and the fact that Duncan played with so many HoF players who were at times arguably better on the court than Duncan actually was. For example, Kawhi was a Finals MVP with the Spurs (Duncan was actually third on the team in scoring in the Finals), and the year after Kawhi left the Spurs he immediately won a title and was Finals MVP again. Kawhi was obviously going to win with or without Duncan. Starting around 2009, Tony Parker and Manu were as good or better than Duncan. Kawhi was a lot better than Duncan by the time he won Finals MVP, and Parker carried the load scoring for years.

How much credit should we really give Duncan for winning multiple championships with so many HOF players like David Robinson, Kawhi, Ginobli, and Tony Parker when they absolutely outplayed Duncan during major stretches both in the regular season and especially in the playoffs for the Spurs? Duncan has weak top 5 case over a lot of other guys because he just was not always the superstar and often he was just a good fit in Pop's system. You would never say that about somebody like Larry Bird, who even though he played on stacked rosters with other HOF players he was always the THE MAN. I just can't take Duncan that seriously as a top five player for that reason. He's just not in that tier. Are there really people that think Duncan is better than Larry Bird? It's doesn't even make sense when you look at these two players on the court. Bird was completely dominant in a way Duncan never even dreamed of as a player. Bird belongs in the top 5 before Duncan.

Also, Duncan played with a lot of other very good to great players like Sean Eliot, Michael Finley, Bruce Bowen, Robert Horry, etc. The Spurs were always loaded, and they had maybe the greatest coach in the history of basketball. The Spurs are like the Duke Blue Devils of the NBA. I firmly believe if you gave Popovich another HoF center besides Duncan, he's winning multiple titles regardless if you keep the rest of the players the same.

Duncan was always #1 on net rating on those teams, with Manu being the actual second fiddle. It’s Parker’s Finals MVP that’s suspect because his advanced stats and on/off numbers weren’t anywhere close to being the best on the team, he just got it because he was left open to score with all the defensive attention on other players. It was literally the Andre Iguodala Finals MVP before Iggy’s time, except Parker didn’t even play the defensive role that Iggy did. Kawhi’s Final’s MVP on the Spurs was more legit than Parker’s since he was also the best defender on the team.

[hauntedcomputer]

[Optms]

Duncan is top 5 all time

No. He is not. He has no case vs Jordan, Kareem, Russell, LBJ and Wilt. I have Magic, Bird and Hakeem ahead of him as well. Duncan 9th all time.

Curry has a better argument for being top 5 all time.

[Prince187]

It’s much better to be remembered as someone with integrity instead of a shameless stadpadder like LeBron and Westbrick