Tony Parker expects Spurs to be competitive beyond Tim Duncan era
After Manu Ginobili and Tim Duncan take off, Tony Parker anticipates that the Spurs will still be able to build a winner.
By
Matt Moore
•
2 min read
Tony Parker told the San Antonio Express-News on Sunday that he has confidence that the Spurs will be able to build a competitive team after Tim Duncan and Manu Ginobili retire.
Asked if more teams should try to rebuild around an aging core, as the Spurs did compared to the Celtics, Parker said Sunday:
“I can’t talk for other teams, but the Spurs have always been very loyal to their guys. You see George Gervin, David Robinson, Sean Elliott.”
Parker might be unaware the Spurs traded away two of them, Gervin and Elliott. But neither happened in this era, and this is what Parker banks on.
“Even though one day I’ll be without Timmy and Manu and Pop,” Parker said, “we’re still going to try to compete and bring in good players and try to be a franchise that wins games . . . I trust the Spurs. I trust R.C. (Buford) and Peter (Holt), that we will still have a competitive team.”
via The future — Parker trusts he’s not Rondo - San Antonio Express-News.
This is a looming question, and a fascinating one. After Kawhi Leonard emerged in 2013, and reinforced doubly by his Finals-MVP performance last June, there's a widespread belief that Leonard is the new star of the Spurs' future. Gregg Popovich has spoken of Leonard in the same vein. But for all of Leonard's growth inside and out, there's still a bit of a gap between Leonard's game and the kind of build-around force that Tim Duncan is and was from the start.
But then, Duncan wasn't even as good as he is now when Ginobili was the Spurs' best player between 2006 and 2010, or even most years since 2010 (except for 2013) when Parker was the Spurs' best player. (Duncan was obscenely good in 2013, not just "for his age," but just in total. He was a defensive player of the year candidate in the same season he provided a huge anchor offensively. It was "Duncan 05 stuff" which made their failure in that year's Finals all the more crushing. Not that that didn't windup working out the year after.)
So maybe Parker can be the Duncan to Leonard's Ginobili/Parker, or the Spurs will find a replacement for Duncan to create a modified three-man core (which is why Marc Gasol is so often rumored to be a free agent target this summer). Parker signed a three-year extension with the Spurs last August, and there's no foreseeable scenario where he doesn't finish his career in San Antonio.
Just for giggles, a look back at 2010 when Amar'e Stoudemire, the night before he officially signed with the Knicks, stepped out of a Broadway play and said that he had talked to Carmelo Anthony and Parker about joining him in New York and that they were in. Well, two out of three ain't bad, in most cases. Except when, you know, it's the Knicks.
