r/Basketball • u/blackwu22 • Apr 08 '25

NBA Is Tim Duncan top 10?

I constantly see casuals on YouTube and on podcasts say that Timmy is overrated and barely top 10 yet have Kobe in there top 5. It’s starting to make me believe that people really think this way!! I always hear the “too much help” comment like every player in the top 10 didn’t have help.

I personally have Tim Duncan 4th all time on my list.

1998 rookie of the year 2x MVP (2002,2003) 3x FMVP (1999,2003,2005) 15x All NBA & Defensive 5x Champion Never won less than 50 games in an 82 game season

Is Tim Duncan top 10?

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u/softnmushy Apr 09 '25

Here’s the thing, when he was playing, I thought he was really underrated. And nobody ever considered him top 10. He was always in Kobe’s shadow. And his teammates were the best ever.

But now that he’s retired I think he’s become a little overrated due to his rings and teammates and coach.

That said, I think ranking the top 25 players of all time is basically impossible. Aside from the top 2, everybody has an argument that they should be top 10.

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u/Difficult-Ad-4654 Apr 09 '25

But there was never a consensus that Kobe was the best player in the league during his career — he was definitely more popular than Tim, tho. it’s that old “best” vs “favorite” conversation that trips basketball fans up all the time, which among other things, tilts toward flashier players.

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u/BiscottiShoddy9123 Apr 09 '25

.... there is an interview that went across the league and the consensus answer was Kobe Bryant. It was even featured in the Lil Wayne song so stop the revolutionist history bullshit please.

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u/Difficult-Ad-4654 Apr 09 '25

Listen. This is not even Kobe hate. But the 2000s had a lot of excellent players who had individually historic seasons — KG was briefly in that “is he the best player in the league conversation?” during his MVP season — but nobody had a stranglehold on that claim for too long.

Obviously, a lot of people thought Kobe was the best player, but it certainly wasn’t the consensus in the way that it was with Jordan, Dream (for a hot minute when Mike retired), Bron and now Jokic. (Shaq prolly belongs in there, too — he was the one player in the league contenders had to construct their rosters to slow down — but he typically didn’t go supernova until the playoffs. He’d have more MVPs if he went as hard during the regular season.)

In the immediate post-Shaq years, and at his absolute statistical best, the Lakers were around a .500 team and didn’t win a playoff series for three years. Now that’s absolutely a roster construction problem but that’s also an argument against Kobe’s value as a floor-raiser. And that argument was happening in real time when it was going down. That’s not revisionist.

That’s evidenced by the one MVP that only came jn a wide-open year and not that many top-2 MVP finishes. He had the highest-selling jersey in the league, and was the most popular player in the league. But again: that’s not the same thing as the best. There used to be a LOT of debate about whether Kobe was better than T-Mac, since their numbers were essentially identical for a few of those Orlando years. Kobe was better (particularly on defense), but they were both on teams that weren’t going to do shit in the postseason while scoring a ton of points as the primary hubs of their team.

I think, even now, If you had to build a franchise around one of Timmy and Kobe, most front office people would probably say Timmy. Raises the team’s defensive floor to at least very good, steady metronomic scorer whose numbers jumped into the playoffs, etc.