If Duncan had his way he’d rather not have just accomplished either, let alone be reminded.
“I was not aware, I would rather not be told that,” Duncan said after the game. “It just means I’ve been playing for a long time and am getting really, really old. I wish I’d only played 10 games and had 1,000 more ahead of me.”
Getting old is never fun. Teammates get a little bolder in taking shots at you, like when reserve big man Matt Bonner laughed about his beloved New England Patriots blowing out Duncan’s Chicago Bears while the game played in the locker room television.
“When my NFL team is beating his NFL team that bad,” Bonner joked, “he doesn’t have a leg to stand on.”
And at a certain age mentioning “Duncan” and “not having a leg to stand on” in the same sentence becomes a fearful thought in any context. But if you can roll with the punches, eventually there are some perks with advancing in age.
For one, everyone eventually stops trying to correct you, chalking up any stubbornness or slightly deviant behavior to being older and set in your ways.
For example, with the San Antonio Spurs cruising on their way to another blowout victory and a Duncan-less fourth quarter, Duncan took it upon himself to drift on towards the scorer’s table and reinsert himself into the game.
“He put himself in, he ignored me. I told him to sit and he said, ‘to hell with you, I’m playing’,” said San Antonio Spurs head coach Gregg Popovich. “He’s been hard to coach for a long time and it’s finally starting to slip out bit by bit.”
Between sarcastically rooting for Devin Hester falling down in the open field (the Bears still had a chance Duncan quipped), and talking about the fourth quarter, Duncan warned (in jest, obviously) it was a moment that will only repeat itself in the near future.
“Oh, I’m very hard to coach, very hard,” Duncan reiterated. “And it’s going to get tougher. As the minutes continue to drop and I’m not in the fourth quarter I’m going to become unbearable on the bench and pretty much annoy him to the point that he has to put me in. That is my goal.”
But even at 1,000 games in, Duncan is still no grouch when measured up to his head coach, who views holding a Blazers team to 78 points as “70-something reasons to complain”. Fortunately, Duncan is still up to the task of butting heads.
“I think his philosophy this year is to try to not play me in the fourth quarter at all, whether we’re winning or losing,” Duncan said. “I think he thinks our team is better off without me out there. I just try to disprove him at some point.”
Read more: http://www.48minutesofhell.com/tim-duncan-grumpier-with-age#ixzz18FkrQhdL
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