Gregg Popovich on Tim Duncan: 'He’s gone. I’ve put it out of my mind'
The last time the San Antonio Spurs began a season without Tim Duncan, Carl Herrera and Greg “Cadillac” Anderson started in the frontcourt. The date was Nov. 1 1996, just days before Bill Clinton’s election to a second presidential turn, and the San Antonio rotation featured three future NBA head coaches: Avery Johnson, Vinny Del Negro, and Monty Williams.
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Three future veteran head coaches.
That is to say, it’s been awhile. The Spurs took in nearly two decades with Tim Duncan and, after five championships, the team isn’t complaining much. With Duncan retired, and the squad set to hit training camp in less than two weeks, coach Gregg Popovich (who was looking on from the front office when then-coach Bob Hill decided to start Cadillac Anderson and Carl Herrera in 1996) is staring down the uneasy absorption into the post-Tim Duncan era that he’s been dreading for lo, these many years.
Talking with Buck Harvey of the San Antonio Express-News, Popovich got right to the point, regarding his mindset heading into autumn:
“He’s gone,” Popovich said this week. “I’ve put it out of my mind.”
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Otherwise, Popovich says this is business as usual. “Same culture, same philosophy,” he said. “I only know what I know. We’ll hang our hat on defense. We just don’t have the greatest power forward of all-time playing for us anymore.”
No big deal.
Popovich later signed off on 76ers coach (and former Spurs assistant) Brett Brown’s assertion that losing Tim Duncan was akin to dropping a child off at college for the first time. Something a parent can prepare for, dating back nearly two decades, though no amount of preparation and steely reserve readies a coach parent for the actual separation.
Here’s Popovich’s reaction to Brown’s comments:
“Absolutely,” Popovich said. “I have a hole in my gut.”
Last season’s Spurs won 67 games, tying five other teams for the seventh-best mark in NBA history. The mark somewhat paled in comparison to the 73-win Golden State Warriors, and neither team was able to get in the way of the Cleveland Cavaliers on their way toward that franchise’s first championship, but these caveats hardly take away from the work of one of this formidable outfit. Yes, the Spurs fell in the second round of the playoffs, but this was one of the greatest teams of all time.
Tim Duncan averaged 8.6 points and 7.3 rebounds with 1.3 blocks per game in 25 minutes a contest for San Antonio in 2015-16, and though his work on both ends led the Spurs to dominant turns on both the offensive (fourth overall) and defensive (tops in the league) sides of the ball, his aching knees caught up to him midseason. Duncan was swapped out of the starting lineup and even the rotation against some smaller teams, and though the future Hall of Famer could still play at a game-tilting level in 2016-17, the pain of working through what has turned into debilitating conditions in both of those knees was just too much to overcome.
According to Gregg Popovich, Duncan has been a familiar face at the Spurs’ workout facility this summer – lifting weights, hitting the court and generally acting as the low key-yet-ubiquitous presence that he’s always been.
Still, don’t expect a comeback, according to Coach Pop:
“I can’t look inside those knees.”
Those knees played a total of 56,738 combined regular and postseason minutes, and that’s even with Popovich limiting Duncan’s regular season minutes per game marks starting in season eight (!) of his 19-year career; when Duncan dipped down to 33.4 minutes per game all the way back in the championship season of 2004-05.
When you toss in the fact that Duncan (barring a rather un-American rule change) will be the last dominant four-year senior to be selected No. 1 overall in the NBA draft (he would have been the top selection the year before and a coin-flip choice in deference to the highly-regarded Joe Smith in 1995), it makes the run all the more remarkable. As remarkable as the idea that Duncan’s name was brought up by the press as a possible Spurs signee as a backup center, at age 40, only half-jokingly just two months after his retirement.
With LaMarcus Aldridge already on hand and Pau Gasol set to bring his wily two-way gifts to the Spurs as a free agent acquisition, the Spurs aren’t exactly hurting badly up front even with the defection of Duncan, the free agent fleeing of Boban Marjanovic, and the loss of Boris Diaw in a salary cap-shaping move.
The culture, however, will take a hit. This team remains rife with professionals, coach Popovich is the best in the business and Duncan will remain a San Antonio mainstay …
“If he wants to go on a scouting trip, fine. If he wants his own station in training camp, he has it. He’s in charge. He can tell me exactly what he wants to do. But I’m not paying him a penny.”
… but nothing can replace the on-court benefit of a brief conversation during a pair of free throw attempts between a Spurs player and Tim Duncan’s very big brain. To say nothing of a screen set, a point guard’s feint cut off, or an extra pass sent in the correct direction.
Along those lines, it’s hard to tell just who will miss Tim Duncan more – the San Antonio Spurs, or the fans that got to reliably tune in to his brilliance nearly nightly from 1997 until last spring.
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Kelly Dwyer is an editor for Ball Don’t Lie on Yahoo Sports. Have a tip? Email him at KDonhoops@yahoo.com or follow him on Twitter!