A thread on the peaks of one of the most disrespected and under-rated legends: Tim Duncan. Focusing on his insane 2002/03 Season (both regular season and playoffs).

Before Diving in further, Let’s look at what Duncan accomplished in a simplistic way: Duncan won League MVP for putting up some insane stats (we’ll look into these soon) while leading the Spurs to the league best record of 60-22.

And After this, Duncan went on one of the best individual playoffs runs leading the spurs to a title and winning finals MVP becoming one of the 9 players in nba history to Win an MVP and Finals MVP in the same season.

Coming to some of the more Basic/Box-score stats in the regular season, Duncan averaged 23.3 points a game, 12.9 Rebounds, 3.9 assists and 2.9 blocks with a True Shooting % of 56.4 (and rTS% of around 4.5%)

For the regular season, Duncan led the league in Win Shares and was a top 3 a wide array of major Advanced Statistics . He was:
1st in WS
3rd in BPM
3rd in PER
Tied 3rd in VORP

With the combination of his impressive box-score and advanced stats, Duncan became one, Duncan became 1 of 4 players (along with Shaq, Robinson and Kareem) to average more than 23 points, 12.5 rebounds , 2.5 blocks a game and 16 win shares in a regular season.

However the regular season isn't even the most impressive part of Tim Duncan’s 02/03 season. (Spoiler: it’s the playoffs.)

In the first round of the playoffs, The Spurs defeated the suns in 6 games in a series where Duncan averaged approximately a 19-16-5 statline with 3.5 blocks a game on solid efficiency.

In the second round, Tim Duncan and the spurs had to face the defending champions Lakers who were coming off a 3peat and were the title favourites heading into the season with Shaq, Kobe and a solid supporting cast around them.

The spurs defeated the lakers in 6 games behind Tim Duncan who averaged 28 points a game for the series while averaging almost 12 rebounds, 5 assists.He was also quite efficient with a 57.5 TS% considering the quality of defense he was going up against and attention he received.

Duncan arguably had his best statistical series in the conference finals against the Mavs where Duncan averaged 28 Points, 17 Rebounds, almost 6 assists and 3 Blocks a game on SIXTY PERCENT True Shooting % as Spurs took down the Mavs in another 6 game series.

To Seal one of the greatest individual seasons, Duncan was immense in the Finals against the Nets as well, taking home the Finals MVP as he averaged a 24.2-17.0-5.3 statline while blocking a massive 5.3 shots a game.

In the 03 postseason, Tim Duncan became 1 of just 2 players (with Lebron James) to have a postseason run where a player has averaged at least 24 Points a game with a TS% of more than 57% while having a VORP of superior than 3 and more than 5 Win Shares.

Critics often use ‘help’ and ‘situation’ as a reason to invalidate to Duncan’s dominance so here are some relevant statistics from this season (from the spurs team for regular season and playoffs)

End of Thread, Thanks for reading (Especially if you read all of this).