Channeling Tim Duncan

For me the first week of work, similar to the first day of classes, is the day when my expectations for myself are at an unrealistic level.  I expect that every second of every minute of every hour of everyday I'm at work, I'm giving 100% of my mind and body.  Even writing that sentence is a little exhausting, the reality of it is completely ridiculous.  Usually I can last a day, maybe two before I just start lagging behind.  I'll check my gmail, become tempted to read about pirates on wikipedia, take extended bathroom breaks.  While this is happening, I'm slowly beating myself up because I can't maintain this immaculate work ethic.  Having undergone this process the past couple of weeks, I've been thinking about what a great work ethic looks like.  Or more generally, what greatness look like? 

 Which brings me to Tim Duncan.  For all of you unfamiliar with before mentioned Timothy Duncan - he's a 6-11 Power Forward that plays for the NBA's San Antonio Spurs (also pictured left).  He's played 12 NBA Seasons, won 4 NBA Championships, 3 NBA Finals MVPs, the Rookie of the Year Award, 2 MVP awards, been voted to 12 All-Star teams, 12 All-NBA teams, and 12 All-Defensive Teams.  It's an incredibly impressive resume.  Although he's still in this 12th season, he's commonly heralded as one of the greatest, if not the single greatest power forward in NBA History.  Yet more than these raw numbers, there is a mysticism that envelopes Tim Duncan.  In certain circles he's commonly referred to as 'The Big Fundamental' - an homage to the mechanical mystery of Tim Duncan, himself.  For years the world has been debating whether Tim Duncan is an adult homo-sapien that has committed himself to the game of basketball so ardently that it has cost him all the emotions, flaws, and unpredictability of humanity or whether Tim Duncan is indeed a Virgin Island engineered basketball playing android of sorts learning what it means to be human with every year that passes.  His track record would argue for the second.  

Tim Duncan has a reputation for being the most consistently great player in the NBA today.  But I wondered how he stacked up against the greatest big men in the history of the NBA.  Using an excel spreadsheet and a couple of extremely nerdy basketball statistical websites I compared Tim Duncan's career to that of Karl Malone, Patrick Ewing, David Robinson, Hakeem Olajuwon, Shaquille O'Neal, Yao Ming, and Dwight Howard.  I looked at 4 categories - points per game, rebounds per game, blocks per game, and Player Efficiency Rating (PER).  PER isn't an easy thing to measure or understand but it's probably the most accurate way we currently have to measure a player's effect (but not perfect).  Since most big men tend to trail off at the end of their careers, posting up some seriously horrendous numbers, I cleaned up everyone's stats to make them comparable to Duncan's relatively young and healthy career.  Here is what came out - in PPG Duncan's career average of 21.4 landed right in the middle but his standard deviation of 2.03 is far better than anyone else's (6.21 on the high end and 2.86 on the low end).  In RPG, Duncan is only behind Dwight Howard (who frankly has barely played) but again his SD is a staggering 0.8 over his career, compared to Howard's 1.51.  In BPG, Duncan is right in the middle but again with a staggering SD of 0.34 over his career.  BPG leader, Hakeem Olaujuwon has a SD of almost twice as much at 0.78.  Finally with PER - Duncan ranks second (25.25) on the list only behind his former teammate and mentor, David Robinson (26.05), but posts a SD of 1.78.  The only person under that, after cleaning up some bad seasons is Olaujuwon with a 1.73, whose career PER is almost 2 points lower.  

Although these numbers don't prove anything outright, since these isolated categories (even PER) can't fully measure the effectiveness of a single player, they tell us two things about Tim Duncan when comparing him to the other legends of the game.  He is both one of the greatest and one of the most consistent players to play his position in the history of the NBA.  It's that combination, not the addition of those two things, that makes Tim Duncan 'The Big Fundamental'.  Almost everyone on this list has had better single seasons than Tim Duncan, maybe even better clumps of seasons, but no one has done it as consistently as Tim Duncan.  That can be seen not only in the raw numbers but in the fact that in (nearly) every year of Duncan's year he has been on both the All-Star Team, All-NBA team, and All-Defensive Team.  You couple that with 4 NBA championships and an entire career spent with exactly one team (a rare feat these days.  Look at Shaq).  Duncan truly is the epitome of greatness.  

As Tim Duncan has shown me.  You don't need to lead the NBA in points.  You don't need to lead the NBA in Rebounds.  You don't even need to lead the NBA in assists.  You don't need to lead in anything.  You just need to perform at a high level every single day.  It's not about being that 100% level one hour then 30% the next then 80% the next.  It's about being at 85% (or something equivalent) all the time instead.  That has changed the way my work days have gone.  No longer am I eating lunch as fast as I can or working through breaks only to crash later but I'm taking my time, not being afraid to go outside, or browse the internet every once a while.  It has not only made me more productive and eased my stress levels, but has altogether made me much more pleasant.  Who would have thought we could learn so much from an Android?