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Tim Duncan Inducted into Basketball Hall of Fame.

Tim’s induction overshadowed by other things. Typical Timmy D. Probably how he prefers it.
 
Tim’s induction overshadowed by other things. Typical Timmy D. Probably how he prefers it.

Yeah, the induction will be a Kobe memorial program and Tim will be perfectly happy to step out of the lime light.
 


The actual interview starts at 2:00 but go ahead and spend the 2 minutes leading up to it.
 
I still can't get quite used to seeing Timmy with grayish hair.
Makes me feel old. Lol
 
Tim Duncan is essentially Bill Russell. He'll continue to get grayer. He'll continue to be remarkably youthful and graceful. At some point when he's like 75, he'll suddenly be really old and that will be when it gets super weird. Of course, I'll be like 85 then.

I remember watching the 70s NBA as a kid and Bill Russell would glide in and watch JoJo White/Dave Cowens/old man Havlichek and it seemed like he could walk out there and play. That was when Boston used to trot out these weirdly shaped bigs that were sort of clods. Thinking Greg Kite and about 5 guys shaped like him. In comparison, Russell seemed fitter, trimmer ...
 
This is Hall of Fame weekend.

The Class of 2020 Press Conference is today at 4:00 on NBA TV. The HOF Enshrinement ceremony is tomorrow at 7:30 on ESPN.

There are a bunch of good articles out there about Duncan. The Spurs app has an augmented reality tour of “Tim Duncan’s Trophy Room” highlighting his five NBA Championships.
https://www.nba.com/spurs/tim-dunca...lk-and-augmented-experience-details-announced

I don't know if Wake is doing anything special aside from an article on the official site.
 
 
boo paywall

The never-before-told tales of Tim Duncan’s Wake Forest career, from ‘footnote’ to Hall of Fame

Brendan Marks and CJ Moore May 14, 2021 67
One of the greatest players of all time was discovered via a pleasantry.

It was the summer of 1992, and Wake Forest graduate Chris King was visiting the Virgin Islands with a group of NBA Draft picks on an exhibition tour. When he returned to Winston-Salem and stopped by the basketball offices, coach Dave Odom inquired about his trip.

“You didn’t see anybody we ought to be interested in?” Odom asked. King said there was one kid. Tall. Thin. Maybe 6-9 and 190 pounds. Had good hands, good feet. King didn’t know his name.

Odom asked his staff if they knew anyone in the Virgin Islands. Assistant coach Larry Davis did, and he soon had a number and a name: Tim Duncan.

On Saturday, that kid from St. Croix will be inducted into the Naismith Basketball Hall of Fame as a two-time consensus All-American, college basketball’s national player of the year, five-time NBA champion, two-time MVP and 15-time All-Star.

The journey began with Odom heading to the Virgin Islands to see if King had found a hidden gem.

Dave Odom, head coach: Sunday was the day that all of the island kind of converges on this one court. He goes out and shoots around a little bit and I watched. All of a sudden you hear this horn, this fog horn. Rerrrr, rerrrr! He’s sitting next to me now, and I said, “What was that noise?” He said, “That was Hess Oil. They let out Sundays around 3 o’clock; we won’t start playing until they get here.” A lot of the kids coming out there are young adults, and they probably were some of the best players, and they couldn’t wait to get down there. They had heard the coach is coming.

They go out and warm up, and next thing I know, Tim comes and sits next to me. I said, “Tim, what are you doing? I came all this way to see you.” He said, “Coach, if I go out there now, they’ll put me on the worst team. We may not win. If we don’t, I’ll be sitting out for over an hour. If I wait and get winners, then I can pick a better team and I’ll have a better chance of winning, and you’ll have a better chance of seeing me play.” That’s what happened. Exactly what happened.

He’s only 16 at the time. That to me showed a sense of awareness for others. Me being the others. A lot of the domestic kids — kids here in New York or Washington or Philly — they would have jumped right out there and got their tails handed to them, and here I was seeing nothing. But that showed that he had a sense for purpose.

Randolph Childress, guard: I got a call one morning we had a recruit in town. And they were like, “Hey, we need you to come have breakfast with this guy.” And I’m like, “Well, who is it?” This guy from the Virgin Islands. I’m like, “There’s no basketball players in the Virgin Islands. This kid can’t play. Get somebody else.”

Jerry Wainwright, assistant coach: When he was on his visit, I asked him, what do you think? He goes, “Well, you know. I guess I’ll come.”

Childress: In Tim’s class, all you heard about was Ricky Peral and Makhtar Ndiaye. Makhtar was on the No. 1 high school team in the country. He had played with (Jerry) Stackhouse and (Jeff) McInnis and those guys at Oak Hill, so he was supposed to be the guy. I remember hearing, “Timmy’s not gonna be ready. It’s gonna take him some time before he’s ready to play.”

Ricky Stokes, assistant coach: Tim was a footnote.

Wainwright: Our original thoughts were we might need to redshirt him.

Tony Rutland, guard: When I took my official Wake Forest visit, they were showing me the freshman dorms, and he was in the lobby by himself, and he had a big gallon of ice cream and one spoon, and he was eating a whole gallon ice cream. They were like, “Oh yeah, he’s got to gain weight.”

Makhtar Ndiaye, center: We were playing pickup at the small gym at Wake, and one day Randolph came in and said, “I’m gonna take the freshmen with me.” So that was me, Randolph Childress, Ricardo Peral, Tim, and I think Barry Canty or Stacey Castle — one of those two guys. And no one could have beat us. No one. Seriously. We just ran the gym that day. And from that point going on, I’m like, OK, there’s something going on with this kid right here.

Lynne Heflin, administrative assistant: Randolph Childress came down one day and said, “You might want to rethink redshirting him.”

Wainwright: Randolph wouldn’t say anything nice about anybody unless he was a pro.

Marc Blucas, guard: His learning curve was, like, straight up that first year.

Jerry Stackhouse, North Carolina guard: You knew, OK, man, this guy’s blocking a lot of shots, getting his hands on a lot of balls, getting a bunch of rebounds. I think for us, the first time really getting on the court, seeing a guy block (Rasheed Wallace’s) shot, forcing him to have probably his first off game. Don’t get me wrong, Sheed has his moments too — Sheed got up and dunked on his head, too — but at the same time, it was like, man.

Ernie Nestor, assistant coach: Ted Turner got involved in something called the Goodwill Games. They ran it like a mini Olympics, where the USA had a basketball team and George Raveling was coaching. He called sometime in June and said, “Look, we understand you have a freshman big guy. Can he come out here for about a week and just practice with our guys? Because we’re running out of big guys.” Timmy is at the island and he was cool with that, so he flew out there. About two days later, they called: “Do you mind if he goes to Russia with us? He’s pretty good.” So he went to Russia and played in the Goodwill Games.

Now they come back and they play against Dream Team 2 in two exhibitions. So now he’s playing against Shaquille (O’Neal). Dave and I flew to Oakland to watch the big fella play, and we’re sitting baseline. There’s Tim, all 205 pounds of him, and he blocked Shaquille’s shot — twice. I can still remember, he blocks Shaq, and Shaq is looking around to see who blocked his shot, and the ball of course is going in the other direction.


(Morry Gash / Associated Press)
Herman Eure, biology professor: Funny as hell.

Childress: Sarcastic. Smartass comments nonstop.

Deborah Best, psychology professor: He could be one of those dry-witted stand-up comedians.

Blucas: I kind of equate it to, do you remember when (Robert) De Niro did “Meet the Parents?” Or you see someone from “Goodfellas” doing comedy? It’s so unexpected that it makes it even funnier.

Tracy Connor, friend/Wake Forest women’s basketball star: Coach Odom used to tell them to pair up in threes … and Tim’s like, “That is impossible.”

Blucas: He takes me snorkeling (in St. Croix) and he’s like a fish. I’m from a Western Pennsylvania factory town. But I’m in that college-athlete-I-can-do-anything mode. I think I’m this experienced snorkeler, and I’m getting my ass handed to me out there in the ocean, and we’re laughing. I end up stepping on a sea urchin, and it’s stinging like hell. He’s like, “Hey, you know, you’re supposed to piss on your foot.” I’m like, “Haha, funny island boy. You’re not gonna trick the land lover into peeing on my own foot.” And he’s like, “No, seriously, the acid and the pH in your urine will neutralize the pain and it really acts like a pain relief. I’m not bullshitting you. Do it or not. Whatever.”

I’m like, “Well, I don’t have to go to the bathroom.” And he smiles. He’s like, “I do.”

Marc Scott, walk-on guard: One summer he took this class called “Mime.” It is what it sounds like, right? Mime. And his final project, they had to go do some presentation or whatever — and he put a bag over his head and drew a face on it, and went and stood up in front of everybody, and then went and sat down. And they’re like, “Tim, maybe we missed something. Will you do it again?” He’s like, no problem. And he did it again!

Connor: I’m on a ridiculous text chain with him and Marc Blucas and Randolph, so the jokes never end. It never ends. He said part of the reason he’s still working out, even with his bad knee, is he doesn’t want to have paparazzi take a picture of him and be like, “There’s the guy that ate Tim Duncan.”

Blucas: I go to do this movie, and it’s a total elevated chick flick; “Jane Austen Book Club” is the name. I’m playing Emily Blunt’s husband, who’s this French teacher who has never been to France, and she finally gets an opportunity. Well, I’m reading the script before I even audition for the job, and part of the story is that the Spurs are going to the NBA Finals, and my character has a whole speech that he cancels this trip to Paris for his wife who’s never been because he gets an opportunity to go the NBA Finals. But he’s like, “Don’t worry, because, you know, unless Tim Duncan gets hit by lightning, the Spurs are gonna win in four or five games, and we’ll still be able to make the trip.”

Well, Tim is my f—— best friend. So I call him up: “You’ll never believe this script I’m reading. I’m auditioning for it tomorrow.” I’m like, “Tim, I’m dropping your name in the room. It’s just happening. I’m sorry. And if you’re gonna give me work now as an actor, then I’m using you.”

I get the job and I say to them, “Look, he’s a friend. Let’s just make my character a Spurs fan.” So Tim signs a jersey “To Dean,” my character’s name. We put it in his office in the movie, and he helped us get the clearances with the NBA, like the whole thing. Like, he really helped out the movie. We shoot the scene and the day that we’re shooting it, I say to the writer and director, “Hey, if it’s OK with you, can I like do an outtake about Tim and just fuck with him a little bit?” They’re like, “Oh, you have to.” And I didn’t tell Emily Blunt that I was gonna do this. And so I’m telling her, “Oh, unless Tim Duncan gets hit by lightning …” and then I go on like a 30-second rant, where I’m just like, “or he just completely abandoned his jump hook. He’s just like, oh, I’m 6-11. I want to be a f—— guard. I want to shoot jump shots and dribble between my legs, and I can’t f—— jump at all. And I just hack people and foul.” I just dismantle his game. And I do this whole thing and Emily, she’s so brilliant and good, she turns around, like, “Is there something going on with you and Tim Duncan?”

Well, lo and behold Tim comes to town a month later. … They cut together the blooper and Tim comes, and we’ve got B-roll of him watching this. … And his face curves and he looks over at me. And he’s like, “You dick.” And the whole place starts busting out laughing. And he leans over to me and has one of the best lines ever.

He’s like, “I’m rich. And I’m patient. I am going to get you back. I will get you back. I got all the time in the world. But for now, touché.”

Best: Tim used to come over and hang out at my house when my son was 10, 11. They’d built forts in either corner of the bedroom and were playing war with these stuffed animals, throwing them at each other.

Scott: He just lived for having fun and running around and being a goof. If you could ever get him out, he’d be the one doing the sprinkler.

Matt Simpson, walk-on guard: He loves video games. We used to battle at “Coach K College Basketball” because they had Wake Forest on it. And so we played Wake Forest versus Wake Forest.

Rusty LaRue, guard: “Mortal Kombat” was one of his favorites.

Rutland: He knew every hit combo.

Wainwright: Nobody could beat him. He was really good at ping-pong, too. The guy is 6-10 and he could do a double somersault. If you were keeping score in any way, he would want to win.

Rutland: He had a collection of swords his senior year. I came in his room one time, I’m thinking they’re dull swords or whatever — it was the sharpest I’ve seen. I just started putting them on his bed and it had slits everywhere. I was like, “Oh man, I could have cut you.” You never questioned it, because that’s who Tim was. That’s what he was into.

Blucas: When he was assistant coaching a couple of years ago, I was shooting a movie down in Atlanta and they were there playing. I was like, “Tim, I know you’ve got a game tonight, but I got a really good friend working on ‘Suicide Squad 2.’ You want to get on set?” He’s like, “Yes! What time are you picking me up? Make it happen.”

I’ve been around Tim for Finals wins, Finals losses, personal disappointments that have happened in his life and tragedy. I thought that I knew the full range of Tim’s emotional repertoire. I didn’t know giddy existed.

Connor: He’s still a big kid. Practical jokes, video games. His home now is a total playground, right? It’s dirt bikes and four-wheelers and regular bikes and basketball courts. He forces you to be a kid.

Joseph Amonett, guard: He’s the best player that any of us at any level ever, ever played with. But the thing is, he was also the best teammate we ever played with.

Simpson: He always treated me from Day One like I was 100 percent on equal footing with him, and always made me feel included.

Ken Herbst, walk-on forward: Right after Coach Odom told me I made the team, I went into the locker room and the only guy sitting down there at his locker is Duncan. He’s fiddling around in his locker, and he looks at me and he just introduces himself. “I’m Tim Duncan.”

It’s kind of like if the president of the United States introduced himself by first and last name. Everybody on campus knew who Tim Duncan was. But he either didn’t realize yet how famous he was, or more likely, he didn’t care. He didn’t care for that interaction or that welcome to be anything different than if you were meeting Bob Smith, introducing himself as a hallmate at the dorm.

Wainwright: He was a real body language guy. And they always say body language is the gateway to someone’s mind. That’s why I say his body language with his teammates during games was unbelievable. Those big ol’ hands, he’d put them on your shoulder. I can’t tell you how many times he said to me in games, in practice, he’d be standing next to me and put that hand on my shoulder and go, “Coach, relax. We’ll be OK.”

I’m 40 years older than him, and you’d look up at him: “You’re right. We’ll be OK.”

Rutland: He didn’t want to disappoint anyone.

Odom: We’re playing at the University of Massachusetts. (John) Calipari is the coach. They’ve got Marcus Camby. It’s a huge game. Neither Camby or Duncan played worth a flip. They beat us in a fairly close game. I’m kind of worried after the game, because it was his first game where I knew the national media was going to be there and I didn’t know how he would take it.

So one by one, the media quizzed him and he answered politely, no problem. Finally, he and I are left in there, and it’s just dead silence for what felt like 15 minutes, but it was probably 30 seconds or a minute. I didn’t say anything. I was just sitting there waiting for him to respond, because I knew he felt horrible. His head came up and he looked me in the eye, and he said, “Do you still love me?” I said, “Tim, it’s one game. It’s one game. You didn’t play well, but it’s only one game. It’s not a career.”

Blucas: It was like he felt like he was supposed to be the rock that does his part every time, in this team of people that all have their roles. When I don’t do my role, I feel like I let people down — that’s the responsibility that Tim carries. Which is, by the way, the mentality of a role player. Right? It’s not the star mentality. He carries the burden of failure for his friends and family. He does not want to let people down. He works his ass off.

Amonett: He always kind of felt the pulse of the team. I was going to ask my wife to marry me over Christmas break of my sophomore year, and Tim knew that. Coach had come up with the idea for us to go to Spain to play a game over the holiday and not go home. That was going to mess my plans up a little bit.

I remember Coach came to me, and he said, “You know, I hear from a few of your teammates that you might be asking somebody to marry you over the Christmas holiday.” I said, “I am.” He said, “Well, we were thinking about going to Spain, but we’re going to skip that trip and we’re gonna let you all go home.” I don’t know who that came from, but I’m pretty sure that it came from Tim.

Blucas: One night we’re playing against Clemson. They’ve got Sharone Wright. He’s 7 feet, 270 pounds, and he f—— leveled me. I got a concussion. It was like the Russian hitting Rocky. I just popped back up and kept going. On that bus ride back, Tim said to me, “Dude, why don’t you just take a minute, fake tying your shoe? Just stay down, get your senses back and get up.” I said, “I’m the smallest guy out here and I just can’t let somebody think they’re better than me in that way physically. I think a champion is someone who gets up when they can’t. It’s the mentality I have to have to play here.”

I graduate that year. I go overseas to play pro ball. He’s in his sophomore year now. He has become a star now in the college world. I come back for Christmas. He’s like, “Hey, I got you a Christmas present.” I’m like, “Woah, I didn’t get you shit.” There used to be a company called No Fear. It was like And One — all the phrases, motivational shit. He hands me this T-shirt and on the back, it literally says a direct quote of what I said: “A champion is someone who gets up when they can’t.” And this is a year and a half later. My hair still stands up on my arms when I think of that story.

Amonett: We were a Champion uniform school my freshman year. Well, going into my sophomore year — when Tim decided to come back as a senior — Nike signs us and we’re a Nike school. We’ve got Nike everything, which was a really big deal in 1996-97. Back then Nike would send the brand new shoes that hadn’t been released yet to Tim for the game. I’m the type of guy who uses a lot of sarcasm. I walk by coach Russell Turner. “How about those — Tim’s new shoes? Those would be pretty nice.” I said, “Yeah, we won’t ever get any of those. They’ll just take care of Duncan.”

About two days later, we go to the locker room, and everybody’s got a pair to wear to the game. And I asked Coach Turner, “What’s going on?” He said, “The big fella took care of y’all.” That entire year Nike was sending stuff, and Tim Duncan never wore a pair of shoes that the team didn’t wear. I mean, he was one of us. He was just a great teammate. He made us feel significant.

Herbst: I had a flying phobia. During a turbulent flight, he came up and sat next to me and he started just to talk to me to kind of divert my attention away, and we got to talking about his mom. And I said, “These flights like this and this turbulence don’t worry you?” He said, “No. When my mom died when I was a little kid, the level of anxiety and fear that I felt when she died, that was kind of the peak of fear and anxiety that I felt in my life. And so everything is relative to that. Nothing’s quite as anxiety-inducing or as fearful as losing my mom was.”

Childress: We were at Florida State my senior year and Tony Rutland’s mom passed. She had cancer. We knew she wasn’t doing well. Tony was my roommate on the road that year. His dad calls and says, “We lost his mom and I want him to play in the game.”

Back then, there were no cell phones. You had the hotel phone. (Rutland’s) worried. He’s trying to call, and I’m taking this hotel phone with me everywhere. Like, I’m going into the bathroom with it. I’m trying everything possible to keep it from him. We get to the arena, and he goes and uses a payphone to call home and finds out his mom passed. We hear a scream in a locker room. And we all knew. We go out, we play the game and lose. Afterward, we come back in the locker room, and Tim wraps his arm around him, because Tim had lost his mom. And we just sat there, and we all just cried. And Timmy was telling him he understood what he had been through. He’s gone through it.

Connor: I’m telling you, he was a different breed than everybody else. He actually wanted to go to class, wanted to get his education. Like, he just didn’t blow things off.

Best: When he went to the Spurs, he emailed me and said, “Look at the first thing I put on my Spurs webpage.” Psychology major. He just wanted me to know that.

Herbst: Just a really thoughtful, cognitive guy. That’s maybe why he majored in psychology, because I think he really enjoyed thinking about human behavior and why people do the things that they do.

Mark Leary, psychology professor: Every week I would assign them to go out and find published research that might be relevant to the ideas we came up with, because this was really starting from scratch. In the initial two or three meetings those first few weeks, Tim was always there and he always participated, but he was certainly less verbose than the other students.

Well, one day, he did begin to get involved, and he lost himself in the conversation. When we were wrapping up, he said, “Man, that was kind of fun, wasn’t it?” And I think all students experience that, but he didn’t have the expectation that coming to work on a faculty project and doing library searches was going to be somehow fun. But he just got really involved and interested in the intellectual challenges that came up. He got really animated, which was really a delight. So we pulled it all together, we polished it up and wrote the chapter.

Best: So the book came out, and of course, any author gets a copy of the book that their chapter is in. So the book company was going to send Tim a copy of the book, so I called the NCAA compliance officer at Wake Forest, and she said, “Gee, I don’t know. You can’t give him anything.”

Leary: I mean, I understand why we have those rules, but it shouldn’t apply to getting a scholarly book you’re an author of.

Best: So she calls the NCAA, then calls me back a day later and says, “They don’t really know. They’ve never had anybody ask that question.” So I told the company to send the book to me, and I told Tim he could come and look at it, but I couldn’t hand it to him to take home until after he graduated. So he came and picked up the book after he graduated.

Leary: I heard that he had Xeroxed the front page of that and had it in a frame in his house in San Antonio when he first went to the Spurs.



Heflin: Never make the mistake that Tim, placid face, meant that he did not want to win, because he did.

Wainwright: He looked like the boy next door, but he’d sock your eyes out to win.

Turner: Dave would have a Christmas party every year where we give gag gifts. We would bust on everybody. The year we played UMass and Tim had struggled against Marcus Camby, we had a special Federal Express delivery during the Christmas party, a gift from Marcus Camby. I remember that pissed him off.

Odom: We’re playing in the NCAA Tournament and it was his sophomore year, and we’re playing Oklahoma State and Big Country (Bryant Reeves). In scouting, I watched Big Country and every time he shot from this one block, he’d jump hook over his left shoulder and he got it off. The guy was 7 feet. He really was enormous. But I also noticed watching the defenders on Big Country, they all tried to affect his shot with their right hand. You think about it — going over his left shoulder and you’re trying to go at him with your right hand, you’re going to leave an open window to the basket. So in film study with the team, I showed Tim that. I said, you’ve got to go with your left hand. That’s not natural for you, but for the next two days, you’ve got to work on your left hand affecting his shot.

It was amazing to see it, to watch it unfold. I mean, he did exactly that. In practice he did it and also in the game. He took it to heart. “That’s what the coach said. That’s what I’m going to do.” (Duncan blocked eight shots, and Reeves went 4-of-15 from the field.)

Blucas: He had this way to get the best of himself and others, in a positive way.

Amonett: I can only remember him getting on me one time about anything in the two years that we played together. We were playing Clemson and they were No. 3. It was a phenomenal game. It was nip and tuck. They had a guy named Tom Wideman. Scouting report was that he was a poor free-throw shooter. It was a four or six-point game late in the second half, and he got it inside. I thought he had an opening. It wasn’t Tim’s guy. Tim was coming from the weak side. So I go over and whack the guy on the shot just to put him on the free throw line. I can remember Tim grabbing me and saying, “Dude, I have got this. I was gonna block that shot. Don’t do that again.” I was like, “OK, you’re right.” That might not have been the smartest move in the world with the No. 1 player in college basketball, the leading shot blocker in ACC history behind me. He saw it two plays ahead.

Blucas: He made his mom a promise to finish college. But there’s people and friends, me included, saying, “Tim, finish your degree online. Like, you’re the No. 1 pick in the NBA Draft. Leave. Go. That’s it.” But he had a responsibility. He made a promise, and he’s that guy. He’s just so loyal.

Odom: That was back in the day when agents could come to games and meet the player after the game with the coach’s blessing. I fielded all kinds of phone calls and in-person visits from some of the most powerful agents in the country. Every time one would come, or request to come and request a postgame meeting just to say hello to him, he would say, “Coach, I don’t want to do that.”

Amonett: It was a pretty, pretty emotional time for all of us. Tim didn’t talk about whether he was coming back. He didn’t talk about the NBA. I mean, he was just a normal college kid to talk to.

Odom: At the end of his junior year, I was getting tired of fielding phone calls about, “Is he going or not?” I called him in. I said, “Tim, look. This is the deadline for declaring and I am not going to be in town on that day, but I’m gonna have John Justus, our SID, write two letters. One says “I am going pro” and the other one says “I am not going pro.” I am going to put both of those letters in an envelope right here on my desk, and at 2 o’clock on Friday afternoon, I’m going to call my telephone number on my desk. You’ll be sitting here and you answer the phone. By then, you should be sitting here and have read those two letters. You tell me which one you’re going to do, and we’re going to put it to bed. Whichever it is is OK by me. Obviously, if you go, you’re going to go No. 1, but if you want to stay another year, you know that’ll make me very happy and our team.

Best: He’s always had his own path. He’s done things Tim’s way.

Odom: At the agreed-upon time, 2 o’clock, I called the number. He picks it up. He says, “Coach, that you?” I said, yep. He said, “I’m not going anywhere.” I said, “Good. I am. I’ve got to go to an AAU game. You have a nice weekend. I’ll see you Monday.”

Nestor: We’re playing at Virginia his senior year and we win the game. Coach goes in to do the postgame, and one of the managers says, “Coach, there’s a guy named Peyton Manning out here who wants to see Tim Duncan.”

Peyton Manning, University of Tennessee quarterback: (My now wife) Ashley and I had been dating, so on weekends, if we didn’t have anything football-wise, I would drive up to Charlottesville a good bit. So I went to the game, but after the game — I can’t remember how it got set up — I remember I wanted to talk to Tim because he’d just stayed.

John Justus, sports information director: I remember them standing there talking in the hallway for a while. I wish I had a picture of them; that was really neat.

Manning: I basically just kind of asked, “Hey, Tim, what was the main decision for you to decide to stay?” And from what I recall, it wasn’t just one thing. He actually said, “I thought I could get even better as a senior, get even more prepared for the NBA.” But he also liked college. He liked the college experience. He liked his coaches, liked his teammates, liked Wake Forest, and he just didn’t want to leave that right away. Boy, that just made a big impact on me, because basically what it told me was that it was OK to stay. Right?

Amonett: This is my opinion: Peyton Manning doesn’t come back for his next season if he doesn’t come and talk to Tim Duncan.

Manning: This is the time where everybody was leaving. … I remember talking to other people, quarterbacks, like Drew Bledsoe had left. So I kind of got his reason. Michael Jordan, believe it or not, I ended up speaking with — he had left as a junior. So I’m talking to a lot of these people that had left, and I’m like, it’s kind of one-sided here. And I think deep down I probably wanted to stay, but I just wanted to know somebody else that had done it and didn’t regret it. And Tim Duncan was that person for me.

Amonett: I’ll tell you how impactful his senior day was. We were out there after it’s over. I think they’re doing his jersey retirement ceremony and honoring him. We’d beaten Georgia Tech. Matt Harpring was at Georgia Tech and a junior at the time. Harpring was trying to decide if he was going to come back or not. Harpring actually doesn’t go to the locker room, and sneaks outside and watches the entire ceremony. As we’re walking back in, the Georgia Tech assistant coaches look over at our two assistant coaches, and they say, “We think that Harpring will come back now, after witnessing that.”

Odom: I said what I wanted to say. Tim was a man of few words, and he said what he wanted to say, and I’ll be darned, I looked at his dad, and his dad — I don’t want to say he grabbed it out of my hand — but I could tell that he wanted to say something. So I gave him the mic, and he draped his arms around Tim’s neck.

Turner: When Tim sort of enveloped his dad with his arms — you know, his long arms — and just squeezed him the way he did, it was unbelievably touching in that moment for everybody who saw it. But then if you watch him over the years, he would always grab the ball that way before the jump ball. The way he would hold the ball in that way seems to also represent somehow his respect and belief in the game, and where it had been able to take him, and how it has changed his life.

Odom: I’ll never forget what his father said (about his advice to Tim before beginning his career at Wake Forest). He did it in that Croixian accent: “I told him, Timmy, go to Wake Forest, do your best and let it rest.”

Exactly what he said. Do your best and let it rest — and I think he did.
 
The Athletic is worth the subscription.

Tennessee fans should be pissed. Tee Martin could have won them two national championships if Manning had left early.

Man, it was cool to read all those old stories again. Glad to see a national audience is getting to read them for the first time.
 
great read- most of those stories I had not heard and read everything about Duncan. Man, that Tony Rutland story...
 
great read- most of those stories I had not heard and I read everything about Duncan. Man, that Tony Rutland story...
 
This is Hall of Fame weekend.

The Class of 2020 Press Conference is today at 4:00 on NBA TV. The HOF Enshrinement ceremony is tomorrow at 7:30 on ESPN.

There are a bunch of good articles out there about Duncan. The Spurs app has an augmented reality tour of “Tim Duncan’s Trophy Room” highlighting his five NBA Championships.
https://www.nba.com/spurs/tim-dunca...lk-and-augmented-experience-details-announced

I don't know if Wake is doing anything special aside from an article on the official site.

Spurs are honoring him during the sat game with phx.
 
Yeah. Tim Duncan Week.
 
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