Tim Duncan isn’t going to play in the NBA anymore. Isn’t that sad?
People within the San Antonio Spurs organization obviously think so, but it goes higher than that. The league itself is shedding tears over Duncan’s retirement, wishing it could do something to stop it from becoming real. On a recent podcast with Adrian Wojnarowski of Yahoo! Sports, Spurs general manager R.C. Buford told a story that helps explain just how revered Duncan is throughout the league.
“You hated to press the send button,” Buford said of filing the paperwork on the moves, which was technically a waiver request. “I got a clever response from a gal we’ve worked with at the league office who these get submitted to. She e-mailed back and said: ‘Can I deny this?’ That’s the reality of the paperwork. The harder part was coming to the realization that Timmy’s not walking through the door to save us anymore. Now, we’re on our own.”
Imagining the sport of basketball without Duncan is even harder for Buford than it is for the rest of us. He also goes on to say, in the podcast, that the Spurs’ organizational credo “onto the next” falls short this time around.
“It can never be onto the next after Tim,” an emotional Buford opined.
