THE LEGEND BEGINS

Duncan Arrived at Wake Forest Unheralded, Left a Star

By Bruno Passos

Tim Duncan discovered basketball on the island of St. Croix. He left his biggest mark on the game while in San Antonio with the Spurs. But between those two stops, over four years at Wake Forest University, Duncan made some of his greatest strides as a player, rising from promising freshman to one of the most decorated players the college game had ever seen. It's here that he made excellence a habit.

As a former swimming star with little competitive basketball under his belt by the age of 16, Duncan received interest from just four colleges, including Providence, Hartford, and Delaware State. He also met Wake Forest's coach Dave Odom, who made a trip to St. Croix on the chance recommendation of a former player and recent NBA draft pick, Chris King. While chatting one day, King mentioned to Odom he'd been impressed by a young player he'd seen while conducting basketball clinics in the Virgin Islands with Hornets center Alonzo Mourning. King didn't catch his name and couldn't recall which island he'd seen him on, but said that the kid "had a good game, and was the only player that stood up to Alonzo and me."

Odom eventually found and recruited him, and Duncan arrived at Wake Forest University in the fall of 1993, determined to fulfill the promise to get a college diploma he had made to his mother before she died of breast cancer. He joined a Demon Deacons team that already had junior point guard Randolph Childress (a future draft pick who would earn first-team All-ACC honors that year) but played in a conference dominated by perennial powerhouses Duke and North Carolina.

Odom had expected to redshirt Duncan to allow him to develop his slight frame. But Duncan's performance upon arrival, paired with the unexpected ineligibility of the team's other big men recruits, opened the door for him to play immediately.

It's safe to say things worked out pretty well.

In his freshman season, Duncan averaged 9.8 points, 9.6 rebounds, and 3.8 blocks per game, showcasing his immaculate footwork and high basketball IQ. The Deacons finished third in the ACC, an improvement over the year before, but the future looked even brighter.

The Virgin Islander caught no one by surprise in his sophomore season. He was viewed as one of the country's top NBA prospects entering the year, and he lived up to the billing in every way. Assuming a larger role on the team, Duncan averaged 16.8 points, 12.5 rebounds, 4.2 blocks, and 2.1 assists per game, while winning National Defensive Player of the Year. Wake Forest finished first in the ACC and won the conference tournament, with Duncan and Childress earning first-team All-ACC honors and forming an imposing one-two combination.

No one would have held it against Duncan if he had left Wake Forest that summer for the NBA. Instead he stayed through his junior year and, when he was once again touted as the number-one overall pick the next summer, he decided to stay for his senior year. He was enjoying college, and would not yield to the pressure to cash in on his talent, adamant that we would keep his word to his mother.

Duncan led Wake Forest to two more great seasons — including another conference title — winning ACC Player of the Year twice, Defensive Player of the Year two more times, and the Naismith, Rupp and Wooden awards in his senior year. The same unrelenting excellence that had become his calling card throughout his professional career took shape as he dominated opponents with his unique physical talents and his mastery of the fundamentals.

Meanwhile, Duncan's teammates had grown accustomed to his low-key demeanor and introverted nature. He made numerous connections during his Wake Forest days, but his relationship with senior walk-on Ken Herbst revealed Duncan's thoughtful nature. As Herbst said:

"He sensed my fear of flying and he gave me a shirt that was near and dear to his heart, and it was a 'No Fear' shirt ... Tim always cut off the sleeves of his shirts. So it was more than a tank top, but a T-shirt without the sleeves. He gave me that shirt. I still have that shirt today."

Duncan graduated from Wake Forest as the winningest player in school history, leading the Deacons to a 97-31 record over his four-year career, but the fact that he graduated is what differentiates him from many other NBA superstars of his time. Kobe Bryant and Kevin Garnett both bypassed college during Duncan's career at Winston-Salem, and the prep-to-pros era was just gaining steam, with Dwight Howard, Amar'e Stoudemire and LeBron James all set to make the jump from high school.

He wasn't the only four-year college player to go number one in the draft (he wasn't even the last, that was Kenyon Martin in 2000), he never led his school beyond the Elite Eight, and he won't go down as the greatest player in NCAA history — although he's probably somewhere in the top 20. The lasting impression from his time at Wake Forest is that, despite how accomplished his college career was, his best still lay ahead of him.

MAKING HIS MARK

Duncan Shines Early and Often During His Rookie Season

By Michael Erler

It probably feels inevitable in retrospect that Tim Duncan, the top pick of the 1997 NBA draft and the unanimous winner of the Naismith College Player of the Year Award, the John R. Wooden Award, and the AP Player of the Year, would quickly develop into one of the consistently dominant players in league history. However, he wasn't convinced it would work out that way.

Even though he more than held his own in summer workouts with the legendary David Robinson, who had won the Most Valuable Player award just two seasons before, Duncan still had no pretensions about his place in the league and took the unusual step of volunteering to play in Summer League, something high lottery picks usually skipped at the time.

"I didn't know what to expect in the NBA," Duncan explained to teammate Manu Ginobili on the Champions Revealed interview that the Spurs participated in after winning the 2013-14 title. "I didn't know if I'd be good, or average, or bad or what it was. Right after I got drafted, Pop is like, 'There's Summer [League], do you want to go play?' and I was like, 'Hell, yeah I want to play. I want to get out there and get as much experience as possible.'"

What happened next has turned into one of the most oft-told anecdotes in Spurs lore. Duncan's first attempt of his professional career, a left-handed hook shot, was swatted into the stands by Utah's Greg Ostertag. As the story goes, Gregg Popovich had an immediate quip for his prized rookie, rolling his eyes and saying "Nice shot! ... We're going to be real good this year," only for Duncan to come back right at his coach with "I told you you screwed up...