Tim Duncan goes scoreless for 1st time in 19-season career
Tim Duncan remains one of the most important players on the Spurs at 39 years old, a mark of his startling dependability and understanding that he has to adjust his role to the realities of what qualifies as advanced age in the NBA. Yet Duncan has now encountered a few statistical lows in what could be his final season. The first came in late November during a loss to the New Orleans Pelicans when he failed to register a rebound for the first time in his career. Saturday night’s home game against the Houston Rockets brought the Big Fundamental another statistical oddity — he didn’t score a point for the first time in his 19-season career.
The numbers don’t lie. Returning to the court after a two-game absence due to right knee soreness, Duncan went 0-of-3 from the field and attempted no free throws in 14 minutes, adding four rebounds and two assists for a minus-1 on the night. He also did not play the final 17:37 after being subbed out for Boris Diaw. The reasons have little to do with Duncan’s play — Diaw helped spark a 22-5 run to close the third quarter as San Antonio coasted to a 121-103 win over their in-state rivals.
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It wasn’t just Duncan’s first 0-point game — he had also never scored just one, bottoming out at two points on seven occasions (including one as recently as December 23 vs. the Minnesota Timberwolves), and had failed to make a shot in just one previous game. His low number of attempts is also somewhat notable, because Duncan had previously attempted that few field goals on only five other occasions, two of which saw him on the court for a combined six minutes. Jeff McDonald of the San Antonio Express-News noted that it was also the first time that the Spurs had ever won a game in which neither Duncan nor Tony Parker (two points on 0-of-6 FG) had converted a field goal.
As noted by ESPN, Duncan just recently broke Karl Malone’s record for the most games with a point to start a career:
It’s likely that Duncan’s bizarre 0-fer was only possible because of the circumstances of his recent injury and Gregg Popovich’s usual attention to resting his veterans. That’s especially believable because the rest of the Spurs frontcourt saw little resistance from a porous Rockets defense. Kawhi Leonard (22 points on 8-of-12 FG), LaMarcus Aldridge (24 on 10-of-16, Diaw (20 on 8-of-13), and David West (10 on 5-of-6) all put up stellar scoring numbers as San Antonio shot 52.3 percent from the field and 13-of-24 from beyond the arc in a fantastic offensive performance. The usually stone-faced Leonard even broke out in a smile:
Unless old foe Joey Crawford’s retirement announcement threw him for a loop, Duncan very well could have scored if the Spurs had set their mind to it. They’re just not the kind of team that treats statistical milestones as worthy of their attention.
No matter its context, don’t expect Duncan’s scoreless streak to run much longer. He followed up his rebound-less outing against the Pelicans by grabbing a board just 35 seconds into the Spurs’ next game. We’ll have to see if he scores early against the Milwaukee Bucks on Monday.
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Eric Freeman is a writer for Ball Don’t Lie on Yahoo Sports. Have a tip? Email him at [email protected] or follow him on Twitter!
