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With Tim Duncan Gone, Spurs Trying to Move Ahead Without Looking Back
- Updated: October 25, 2016
SAN ANTONIO — The car customization and performance shop Tim Duncan owns and operates stands a mere half-mile from the San Antonio Spurs’ practice facility.
Via his souped-up Camaro or taking a stroll in one of his typical oversized shirts to offload the humidity, it’s an easy jaunt for Duncan. He lives nearby, too.
Much was made of the newly retired Duncan’s initial visit to see and even advise his old team at the start of training camp…with an open invitation for more.
Yet head coach Gregg Popovich said Duncan showed up only three or four times overall in the team’s month of preparation.
Maybe it’s for the best.
Less might well be more right now for a franchise that needs its players to avoid looking over their shoulders at that mountain of success Duncan built in the past.
For one, Pau Gasol said he goes into his first regular-season game for the Spurs on Tuesday night in Oakland against the Golden State Warriors without Duncan’s shadow hovering over that silver-and-black uniform any longer.
“I don’t have that pressure,” Gasol told Bleacher Report last week. “Things change. People are different. And you have to be true to yourself and always give your best, and that’s what I’m going to try to do.”
Even though just about every other fan wearing a Spurs jersey in town seems to be holding on to No. 21, and no matter that yellowed, employee-posted newspaper photos of Duncan still hang proudly in storage rooms deep in the AT&T Center, no one has been bringing up to Gasol how Duncan used to do this or how Duncan was great at that.
Talk to Gasol, however, and he mentions how he could really use some of that information.
“I wish I could’ve played with Timmy to some degree—and have him around in practice, because I’m sure even at this point in my career I could learn a lot from him,” Gasol said. “And it’d be fun.”
The 36-year-old Spanish big man already has been dealing with the adjustment of how little he is told under Popovich’s rule, not knowing how much he’ll play in exhibition games and being surprised that he played only 22 minutes in the exhibition finale Friday—the same as he played in his exhibition opener three weeks ago.
De-emphasizing the regular season to prep for …
