Tim Duncan wins $100 bet by making rare 3 in Spurs’ win over Thunder
Tim Duncan’s been an awful lot of things in his illustrious 18-year career — an NBA champion (five times), an All-Star (15 times), the league’s Most Valuable Player (two times), the NBA Finals’ Most Valuable Player (three times), an All-NBA selection (14 times, including 10 first-team nods), an All-Defensive Team pick (14 times, eight first-team choices) and so much more. One thing he’s never been, though, is a floor spacer. Heading into Wednesday’s action, the “Big Fundamental” had attempted just 199 3-pointers in 1,553 combined regular-season and postseason games, making 34 of them.
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This is, of course, to be expected; there’s no reason to keep Duncan parked out on the perimeter when he’s one of the most gifted and influential interior scorers, rebounders and tone-setters the game has ever seen. And yet, there was Duncan, in the third quarter of the San Antonio Spurs’ hammering of the Oklahoma City Thunder on Wednesday night, flowing to the left corner and getting all analytics-friendly in front of the OKC bench:
It was just Duncan’s second 3-pointer of the season in seven tries, and it offered a pretty solid summation of the state of play on a night where the Spurs — two games removed from looking like world-beaters, one game removed from looking ripe for the picking — once again reverted to their championship form to frustrate Russell Westbrook (held to just 16 points on 5-for-16 shooting, with seven assists, four rebounds and two steals) and dispatch a short-handed Thunder squad that bears little resemblance to the one San Antonio ousted in last year’s Western Conference Finals.
Gregg Popovich’s club had everything going on Wednesday — sparkling 58 percent shooting, a 13-for-21 mark from the field, 28 assists against just 11 turnovers, seven players in double figures, etc. — to the point where even Duncan cashing in from the corner seemed perfectly reasonable. And, let’s be clear, Timmy did cash in after that rare triple:
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This is how rich people get and stay rich — even after making something like $225 million in career salary (to say nothing of whatever he’s pulled in from endorsement deals and the like over the years), you don’t pass up opportunities to pull a face card just by shooting from the short corner. I’m not sure if that’s one of the seven habits of highly successful people, but if it’s not, maybe it should be the eighth.
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Dan Devine is an editor for Ball Don’t Lie on Yahoo Sports. Have a tip? Email him at [email protected] or follow him on Twitter!
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