Parker joins ‘Big 3’ brethren as he bids adieu to basketball
It wasn’t supposed to end like this.
On the night of March 17, Tony Parker walked off the floor at Miami’s AmericanAirlines Arena — site of some of his greatest basketball triumphs and bitterest disappointments — and into the visitors locker room.
He was wearing a Charlotte Hornets uniform.
The Hornets still had 13 games left in the regular season, but Parker didn’t play in any of them. His season — and, it turns out, his magnificent 18-year NBA career — was over.
The former Spurs point guard announced his retirement Monday at age 37, joining his Big Three contemporaries Tim Duncan and Manu Ginobili in the basketball afterlife.
He is the only member of that trio to finish his career in some place other than San Antonio. In a way, that is a shame. Parker chose his own path, of course, and nobody begrudged him.
A free agent last summer, Parker could have chosen to sign up for a few more seasons with the Spurs, the team that drafted him as a French teenager in 2001.
The Spurs would have been glad to keep him around but couldn’t promise him playing time in a young, developing and crowded backcourt. Parker could stick in sort of a de facto coaching role, mentoring the kids ahead of him on the depth chart, but minutes for the aging legend would be hard to come by.
That wasn’t a life Parker was prepared to lead just yet.
Parker signed a deal to back up All-Star point guard Kemba Walker in Charlotte, where Parker played fairly well until the Hornets fell out of the playoff hunt. Then, in just the situation he had hoped to avoid, Parker began to cede minutes to rookie Devonte’ Graham.
“I came to a conclusion that it was just time to move on,” Parker told ESPN’s The Undefeated. “I have a lot of great stuff in my life. A beautiful family. Beautiful kids. And so I wanted to spend more time with them.”
In his 17 seasons in San Antonio, Parker cemented himself as an undisputed member of the team’s Big Three. But there was a clear pecking order among fans.
Duncan was Duncan, one of the greatest players in NBA history and without whom the Spurs’ championship ledger would remain at zero.
Ginobili was the selfless, daring dynamo who captured the hearts and imagination of San Antonio’s Hispanic fan base.
At least as far as perception went, Parker was the third wheel of the group. He was the rare superstar often appreciated more in visiting arenas than in his own hometown.
Now that he is officially retired, however, perhaps it is time for San Antonio to admire Parker for who he was, rather than compare him to who he was not.
He made six All-Star teams, earned five All-NBA selections, was the starter on four championship teams, won the 2007 Finals MVP trophy and twice finished in the top 6 for the league’s regularseason MVP award.
From 2012 to 2014 — and even at various points before that — Parker was arguably the Spurs’ best player. For a stretch, one could have made the case he was the top point guard in the NBA.
In three years, Parker is likely to be inducted into the Naismith Basketball Hall of Fame.
The club’s run as a championship dynasty does not play out the same without him.
If Duncan was the foundation and Ginobili was the heart, Parker was the engine that fueled the Spurs.
Perhaps what happens next will be fitting enough.
No. 21, No. 20 and No. 9 will hang side by side by side for all posterity.
Together.
The way it was always supposed to end.