NBA Playoffs: Duncan’s Disappearing Act

Two regular season MVP awards. Two NBA Finals MVP awards. Even an All-Star Game MVP award.

It's possible that after almost nine seasons in the NBA, Tim Duncan is going to need to find someplace else to store his awards. The mantle in his house is probably jam-packed with trophies and plaques that confirm that he must be, at worst, one of the best players the NBA has seen in the post-Michael Jordan era.

Sadly, Duncan's play during the Finals against Detroit is doing its best to counter that argument.

For the most part, Duncan's numbers themselves do not belie his reputation. Duncan is scoring 19.6 points a game and averaging 14.6 rebounds per game through the first five games of the series. Though not identical to either his career regular season or postseason numbers, they're pretty close — they're not an anomaly by any stretch. Add to that 2.4 blocks a game, and it seems that if Duncan isn't setting the world ablaze with his performance, he's certainly not hurting the team.

Look beyond the numbers.

In the two games that San Antonio won at home, Duncan's numbers were there. But if you ask anyone who's been paying attention to the series, San Antonio's MVP through the first two games was Manu Ginobili, who brings a level of excitement and enthusiasm to his team that Duncan never could.

When the Spurs failed to capitalize on a reeling Pistons squad in Games 3 and 4, where was the MVP then? Shooting a miserable 31 percent and scoring just 30 points between the two games. Duncan averaged 13 rebounds over those two games, many of them off of his own misses before Detroit finally put him out of his own misery by wrestling the ball away and taking it back down the floor.

Great players know what they need to do to win games. They use their reputation to draw double teams and kick it out to open teammates. They get their points by getting to the line and scoring from there. But it was Ginobili who passed out of a double team to get the ball to "Big Shot Bob" Horry for the game-winning three. And it certainly wasn't Duncan filling it up from the free throw line.

Remember when people used to say that Shaq couldn't be the best big man in the league, that he couldn't possibly be the MVP, because his free throw shooting was so terrible that he couldn't be on the floor in crunch time? If that was true, then on Sunday night, Tim Duncan was Shaq's equal.

Duncan missed six straight free throws in the fourth quarter, and he looked as surprised as anyone in the arena that he made the seventh attempt he had. Not since Nick Anderson missed four straight against Houston in the 1995 Finals had anyone choked so badly at the line on the national stage. Of course, Anderson didn't have Robert Horry to bail him out with 21 points in the last 12:01 of regulation and the overtime period. Horry was on the other side then, winning the second of what is looking like six NBA championships.

At least Duncan, who has become mediocre from the charity stripe over the past three years after draining essentially 80 percent of his free throws in 2002, is man enough to take responsibility for the Spurs' almost loss on Sunday. Duncan could be seen with his head in his hands as the buzzer sounded, after he missed the easiest put-back dunk of his life off of a Ginobili miss. He was the first one off the bench to hug Horry after he drained yet another three-pointer with time winding down in the playoffs. And he owned up to it at the post-game press conference.

When asked if he'd ever "had a stretch like that from the free throw line in a big game before," Duncan responded with a laugh, "Absolutely." But when asked about the relief he felt when Horry came through in overtime, Duncan answered with the humility of a man who might have seen his legacy flash before his eyes. "He pulled me out of an incredible hole that I put myself in," Duncan said.

Duncan knows that the true legends of the game don't miss free throws and put-backs in the Finals. Passes don't slip through their hands harmlessly like they were wearing oven mitts. Magic Johnson, Larry Bird, and Michael Jordan never embarrassed themselves on a national stage in the prime of their careers. They never went almost 10 minutes at the end of a crucial Game 5 without scoring a field goal. And they never backed down in crunch time, apt to let their teammates win the game while they didn't take a shot in the last three minutes of overtime.

Ironically, according to the similarity scores on Basketball-Reference.com, the most apt comparison for Duncan is his former teammate, David Robinson. Before Duncan showed up as the highly-touted first overall pick in the 1997 draft, people said Robinson was "soft," that he wasn't clutch. There were doubters as to whether he'd ever win the big one. When Duncan arrived, the presence of another big man allowed Robinson to deflect at crunch time, to play a supporting role. Now, without another superstar on the team, Duncan is doing the same thing.

Duncan disappeared Sunday night, and he knows that his team is lucky to be going home with the lead, needing to win one of two games in a building where they haven't lost consecutive games all year. There's a good chance the Spurs and Duncan will win their third NBA title, and depending on who steps up, Tim Duncan and his double-double stat line might win a third Finals MVP award.

But don't let the stats fool you. It's time for Tim to step up.