Duncan vs. James

Last night the Celtics beat the Cavaliers on their homecourt.  It was the worst home loss in the playoffs that the Cavs had ever had.  That’s not the story though.  For the entire game, Lebron James looked unmotivated, disinterested, and lethargic.  He didn’t make a field goal until the 3rd quarter.  He finished 3-14 with 15 points.  When I watched a few minutes of the game, he took 5 jumpers with his toe on the line.  Those are the worst shots in basketball, but for some reasons he was content to just shoot those shots over and over again.  He looked like he didn’t want to be there in one of the most important games of his career.

Yahoo’s main NBA correspondent, Adrian Wojnarowski, has decided to speak up against James’ antics.

James is chasing Warren Buffett and Jay-Z the way he should be chasing Russell and Jordan and Bryant. He wants CEOs to bow before him, engage him as though he is a contemporary on the frontlines of industry. Only, the truth of the matter is, he’s a singular talent who’s going to watch his playoff failures start to chip away at the thing that seems to matter most to him: his marketability and magnetism.

He also points out that there seems to be no real drive to win a championship.  He only seems to attempt to achieve that goal because that’s what NBA players do:

This isn’t a part-time thing. Winning everything takes a single-minded, obsessive devotion. Michael Jordan had it. Kobe Bryant does, too. They didn’t want to win championships, they had to win them. They needed them for validation and identity and, later, they became moguls. LeBron James is running around recruiting college kids to his marketing company. He picks up the phone, tells them, “This is the King,” and makes his pitch to be represented in his stable. Think Kobe would ever bother with this? Or Michael? Not a chance when they were on the climb, not when they still had a fist free of rings.

Lastly, he discusses the distractions that Lebron brings into the arena just by puffing up his own ego:

He invited all this drama about walking out on his hometown team this summer, and now free agency hung over the Q like an anvil. Here’s a city that’s waited 46 years for a championship, a town that reacts viciously to the sheer suggestion that James could leave for New York this summer. These fans have been much better to James than he’s been to them. It hasn’t been the media that’s built his role in the summer of 2010 to a crescendo, but James himself. He constantly manipulated it with suggestions and hints and wink-winks to New York.

What does this have to do with Duncan though?  Well, as recently as the summer of 2000, two of the best players were free agents.  Tim Duncan had finished his rookie contract and was testing the waters of free agency.  There was no “declaration” that July 1, 2000 would be a day that would go down in infamy.  There was no fanfare for the greatest power forward to play the game.  He didn’t wear Magic colored shoes.  He never asked for the attention on himself.

Comparing the two of these players, one being the greatest power forward ever (so far) and the other being the best small forward to play the game so far, it’s obvious that one has an air of professionalism, while the other seems perpetually sunk in the mire of his own ego.  If you had the choice, which would you choose to lead your team?  Would you want the one that prances around while never having won a championship, or the one that combines professionalism with his profession?

Duncan’s personality has exuded into Spurs culture.  For the past 20 years, Robinson and Duncan have been the platonic figure of professionalism in the NBA.  And they are the reason that a lot of fans have chosen the Spurs as their favorite team.  There may be more talented players out there, Michael Jordan, Kobe and Lebron James come to mind, but rarely is talent and humbleness combined so effectively.  Thank God for those two professionals playing on the same franchise, which in turn, changed the organization to emulate their persona.

Advertisement