Tim Duncan — The Heart of San Antonio
A Look Into How Tim Duncan Affected My Life
I’m not even sure where to begin — I’ll start by prefacing that I realize that, to the outsider, it might seem a bit crazy to see grown men and women crying because a man decided to stop playing basketball. Granted, I haven’t shed any tears since hearing about Tim’s retirement, but I can definitely understand the need to (and there’s a chance I still will, down the road.) But this is about way more than that. This is about one bounce of a ping pong ball in 1997 transforming an entire city and changing everything forever. To put it more clearly, Tim Duncan is the heart of San Antonio. It’s not just about a talented basketball player coming to a team and making them champions — it’s about a person with character making a whole city proud to call themselves fans.
Throughout my time as an NBA fan, I have seen player after player get in hot water for just about everything — from keeping a gun in their locker room, to beating their wives, to starting an all-out brawl with the paying fans, to kicking players in the balls and costing their team a championship. There have been players with all the talent in the world that quite simply just didn’t have good character; and their teams, careers, and fans all suffered for it. Every time I saw a new story like this, I would always have the same thought: At least we have Tim. The most controversial thing Tim Duncan ever did was get ejected by an NBA official for laughing from the bench.
Out of all the positive qualities Tim had, his absolute best was his reserved, quiet, silent-assassin nature. I know there are already 10,001 articles about this, but it is truly what made him stand out above anyone else. If you were to just ask me in general what my favorite and least favorite attributes of a person are, they would be humility and pride. The way Tim carried himself for 19 years was in the most humble and least prideful way I can imagine — and it only expanded over time and spread out to all of his teammates (besides Stephen Jackson.) It never got old watching Kevin Garnett, Shaq, Amare Stoudemire, etc talk trash or showboat in front of Tim, only for him to get the last laugh in the end (much to Joey Crawford’s chagrin).
But now that all the compliments about Tim are out of the way, it’s time to get down to how this man has personally affected me. Outside of my own family, Tim Duncan has been the single most influential person in my life, and it’s not even that close. Him bringing such success to the Spurs made me closer to my friends, family, and even strangers. It gave us all reasons to gather and spend time together. I met a good friend that lived all the way in Costa Rica, Andrea, through a Spurs forum a long time ago, and eventually my sister and I were even able to take an awesome trip over there and have a nice place to stay. That friend’s life was impacted by the Spurs in an even greater way — she met her to-be husband Kashif on the same Spurs forum, and they have a child. I don’t think any of that would have been possible without Tim.
Other than all this, 5 of the most memorable moments of my life were all made possible by Tim Duncan — any fan of the Spurs knows what these moments are. It’s absolutely crazy to think he has brought our city 5 championships — more than 26 other teams have! The Spurs will definitely never be the same again, but I’ll still always be a fan because of the culture that Tim built. And while the team might not be what they once were for a few years, San Antonio can still say: at least we have Tim.
Thank you, TD.
