Duncan, Spurs worth price of admission
Raptors have had quite the interesting week, and it continues with San Antonio
It has been a wonderful week to be a Raptors fan in Toronto because the creativity, speed and magic of Stephen Curry and the Golden State Warriors on Saturday and the last chance to fete Kobe Bryant on Monday made for a magical and emotional couple of days.
Curry is a singular talent on the ascent, as good a shooter as has ever lived, and to see him in person had to be a treat. The soon-to-retire Bryant connectedwith Toronto fans like few other players ever have, and the nights were events as much as they were games. Now? Now the fans get to see someone who could be regarded as the best player of the last 20 years and certainly the most consistently successful team of the same era. And if anything exemplifies the regard with which Tim Duncan and the San Antonio Spurs are held, it’s that their arrival for their lone visit of the season for Wednesday’s game has been lost in the hype associate with Curry, the Warriors, Bryant and — despite the wretchedness of their current season — the Lakers as an iconic franchise.
“I think among the NBA circle they get the credit, people in the NBA certainly know how good, how consistent, how disciplined that team has been for such a long time,” Raptors assistant coach Rex Kalamian said Tuesday of the Spurs.
No one’s had a chance to ask the Spurs about that but, unquestionably, the feeling is they certainly don’t mind and they absolutely don’t care.
It’s not ‘The Spurs Way’ to get caught up in such minutiae, they’d rather go about the business of winning and winning big without much of the accompanying hoopla that’s a distraction more than anything. Let others pile up the highlight reel moments and the press clippings; the Spurs simply want to win.
And Duncan is a perfect example of that. He doesn’t have the bullish strength of a LeBron James, he doesn’t shock people with shots out of nowhere like Curry, he doesn’t have the outward emotion and creativity of Kobe Bryant, he doesn’t have the lithe body and effortless style of a Kevin Durant or the ball dominance of a Carmelo Anthony and hell-bent nature of a Russell Westbrook.
What he does have are five NBA titles, three NBA Finals MVP awards, two regular-season MVP trophies, enough other individual accolades to fill two trophy rooms and
“People in the NBA certainly know how good, how consistent, how disciplined (the Spurs) have been for such a long time.” RAPTORS’ REX KALAMIAN
enough respect from people in the game to match that given anyone over the past 20 years.
Duncan and the Spurs have a subtlety that is the envy of 29 other franchises.
“(It’s) the non-verbal communication they have with each other, the tricks within the game,” said Kalamian, who was an assistant coach in the NBA’s Western Conference for more than a decade and knows the Spurs better than anyone on the Raptors staff. “You don’t really know unless you watch them play every night and you begin to understand that a lot of the things they get — the backdoor cuts — these are built up over time.
“How they play, really play through all that stuff, for us people in the NBA is amazing and you get a little jealous at how easily their offence clicks.” And skills? Duncan has skills simply out of this world. It’s probably safe to say 95 per cent of the players in the league can drop jaws with open dunks. And it’s also safe to say that maybe five per cent can make the same 15-foot banked jump shot Duncan has made thousands of times in his career with defenders crowding him and everyone in the arena knowing what he wants to do.
That is skill at an unmatched level. Perhaps understated and forgotten these last few days here in the hype over Curry and Bryant, but skills fans at the Air Canada Centre should marvel at Wednesday night.