With the Oklahoma City Thunder eliminating and upsetting the San Antonio Spurs in the Western Conference Semifinals on Thursday night, we could be saying goodbye to not just one, but two of the greatest players to ever step foot on an NBA court this season.
While Kobe Bryant’s retirement tour and curtain-closing 60-point game were a major storyline this season, Tim Duncan has been predictably much more coy about his basketball future. After San Antonio’s Game 6, Duncan said he would take some time to “figure life out.” However, it’s hard to deny that after watching Duncan’s role with the Spurs diminish throughout this season and especially in the playoffs, the end could be near. Duncan averaged career lows in points, rebounds, and minutes this year, and those numbers all declined in the postseason.
If this is it for Duncan and he goes on to retire at 40 years old, it’s appropriate that he would retire in the same season as Kobe, and in polar opposite ways. You couldn’t find two superstars more different from one another than Tim Duncan and Kobe Bryant. In truth, it’s symbolic of the career arcs that they have both experienced. Kobe always drawing more buzz, more publicity, more controversy, more celebrity. Duncan quietly and even sometimes anonymously going about his business. If Duncan decides to retire in a first-person essay in The Players’ Tribune, it’ll be the biggest surprise of the season.
https://youtu.be/BfUvqm6J1Nc
Both are five-time NBA champions. Both will have played their entire careers with one team — Kobe is first on that list after 20 seasons with the Lakers while Tim Duncan is tied with John Stockton after spending 19 seasons with the Spurs. Both are NBA and Finals MVPs. Both had a record 15 All-NBA selections. Both are on the short list of the greatest to ever play the game.
Duncan and Kobe are two players that will define the post-Jordan Era in the NBA, during which the league struggled but eventually found its identity and superstars to carry the torch forward from its mid-90s peaks. When looking at their career numbers, it’s amazing to see just how closely their careers paralleled one another.
But whose career was better? Or to put it a different way, whose career would you have rather had? If you had to pick just one of them to define the last 20 years of professional basketball, who would it be? These are the sports debates that are actually worth embracing and not the empty filibusters on clutch genes that you see on First Take and FS1.
So with an ode to the legendary Nick Bakay, here is the tale of the tape of Kobe and Duncan’s careers side by side. It’s broken up into three categories – awards and honors, career statistics, and advanced statistics.
Awards and Honors
In this category, Duncan and Kobe are almost mirror images of one another. Kobe has the slight edge when it comes to All-Star Game Appearances and Player of the Week awards. (And although it’s not on the list, Kobe is tied with Bob Pettit with a record four All-Star Game MVPs. But when it comes to the modern day All-Star Game, it’s akin to being the best player in a real-life game of NBA Jam and/or Space Jam.)
When it comes to All-NBA awards, there’s nobody that can match Kobe as he holds top spot in both All-NBA and All-NBA Defensive honors. However, Duncan comes closer than anyone not named Michael Jordan.
Combined All-NBA and All-NBA Defense 1st Team Selections
1. Kobe Bryant – 20
2. Michael Jordan – 19
3. Tim Duncan – 18
4. Kareem Abdul-Jabbar – 15
While Kobe might have a slight edge there, it’s Duncan who levels up when it comes to MVP trophies in the Finals and the regular season. In each category, he holds a slight edge. Only Michael Jordan has more Finals MVPs than Duncan with six total. Duncan is tied for second with two other Lakers: Magic Johnson and Shaquille O’Neal.
It’s interesting to see where that Finals MVP discussion takes us, particularly now that O’Neal’s name has entered the picture.
Yes, Kobe did win two rings without The Big Aristotle (still my favorite Shaq nickname), but let’s remember it was “Shaq and Kobe,” and not “Kobe and Shaq” in those early Lakers years. Those 2000, 2001, and 2002 championships were defined by O’Neal’s dominance, while the Lakers teams that would take on Bryant’s image would come later in the decade. On the flip side, even in the 1999 Finals at the tender age of 22 years old, the Spurs were Duncan’s team. In the five-game series against the Knicks, Duncan was San Antonio’s leading scorer and rebounder, besting the numbers of fellow Spurs legend David Robinson by a good distance.
But again, here’s where the divergence of Duncan and Kobe’s careers come into play yet again. As they aged, their personal and team identities flip-flopped. Duncan became more reliant on the team around him, first with Tony Parker and Manu Ginobili, and then Kawhi Leonard keying Finals success. On the other hand, Kobe finally proved that he could win not just one ring without Shaq, but two. Although Doc Rivers might want to put an asterisk on one of those with Kendrick Perkins’ Game 7 injury in 2010 against the Celtics. Seriously.
In the end, this one might just be a push.
Career Statistics
It’s amazing that given their longevity, Kobe and Duncan have played just about the same number of games (1392 vs. 1346) over the span of their two-decade long careers. Even though Duncan has one less season than Bryant, he’s also had fewer major injury problems late in his career. Duncan played in at least 58 games every full season of his career, while Bryant only played a combined 41 games in the 2013-14 and 2014-2015 seasons.
It is a bit of an apples-to-oranges comparison when looking at the career numbers because they played two vary different positions. So while Bryant has the edge in career points by a good margin (25.0 PPG vs 19.0 PPG), it’s Duncan that has the edge in rebounds and blocked shots. You might be willing to win a wager with someone, betting that Tim Duncan is in the top 100 in career assists. Well, check that — you may win a much larger wager betting that Kobe Bryant is in the top 30 in career assists!
So who gets the edge here? Well, it’s hard to argue with the man who is the third-leading scorer in NBA history and has the second-highest scoring game (81 points) in NBA history AND has the most insane final game performance in NBA history (60 points on 50 FG attempts). Kobe, it is… slightly.
Advanced Statistics
It’s almost spooky to see how closely Duncan and Kobe’s careers line up. Even though one was a power forward and one was a shooting guard, their true shooting percentage is only 1/100th of a percentage point apart (Duncan .551 vs Kobe .550). It’s also interesting to see how consistent both Kobe and Duncan are when it comes to their regular season and postseason PER numbers — they’re nearly identical.
However, the advanced statistics love Tim Duncan. He holds the edge in most advanced categories and it’s most pronounced in the win shares department (i.e., how many wins do you add to your team). And even though Kobe held the slight edge in All-NBA defensive selections, it’s at that end of the floor where Duncan pulls away in the advanced realm.
Total Win Shares
Duncan: 206.4 (6th)
Kobe: 172.7 (15th)
Offensive Win Shares
Duncan: 100.03 (21st)
Kobe: 122.08 (12th)
Defensive Win Shares
Duncan: 106.34 (2nd)
Kobe: 50.66 (42nd)
When it comes to defensive win shares, Duncan is only behind Bill Russell (133.64) and they’re the only two players over 100 for their career. In fact, Duncan is the only player with over 100 offensive and defensive win shares in his career.
Head-To-Head
So right now it’s one push, one for Kobe, and one for Duncan. Maybe we can break our tie in this department: Head-to-head… or not so much. While Duncan holds an edge in regular season matchups, Kobe’s Lakers are ahead in the playoffs.
Regular Season: Duncan/Spurs lead 31-21
Postseason: Kobe/Lakers lead 18-12
Oy…
Final Verdict
The whole point of a debate is to try to name a winner, right? Well, sometimes that’s a lot easier said than done. In this case, the tale of the tape makes it fairly obvious that it’s too close to call when it comes to measuring the careers of Tim Duncan and Kobe Bryant. Your choice may just come down to your personal likes and dislikes and whether or not you prefer life on the coasts versus flyover country, or the flamboyant versus the fundamentals. Whichever you choose, there’s no doubting the contribution that both made to the NBA over the last 20 years.
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