Tim Duncan’s impact on Detroit Pistons’ history

The news of Tim Duncan’s retirement has made waves across the basketball world, and his impact on the history of the Detroit Pistons can’t be forgotten.

Tim Duncan is retiring after 19 illustrious seasons in the NBA. The 15-time All Star has achieved everything imaginable over the course of his career, including win five NBA titles with the San Antonio Spurs (in 1999, 2003, 2005, 2007 and 2014) and three NBA Finals MVP awards (in 1999, 2003 and 2005).

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While fans of the Detroit Pistons have mostly observed his career and accomplishments from afar, as being in two different conferences the Pistons and Spurs only play twice a year in the regular season, that was a completely different story in the 2004-05 season.

That season the Pistons made their second straight NBA finals a year after decimating the mighty Los Angeles Lakers to win the 2003-04 NBA championship. Waiting on the Pistons were the Spurs who had won two of the previous six championships.

The Spurs were led–much as they are today albeit to a lesser degree–by Tim Duncan, Manu Ginobili and Tony Parker, and they had more or less coasted to the finals while only being pushed to as many as six games in any series (by the Seattle Supersonics, may they rest in peace), while the Pistons had just come off an exhausting seven game battle against the Miami Heat in the Eastern Conference Finals.

The Spurs got off to a hot start, winning the first two games in San Antonio in blowout fashion before the Pistons got things together and won the next two games in Detroit by even bigger blowout scores. In game five, also in Detroit, Rasheed Wallace famously left Robert Horry of the Spurs open to double team Ginobili in the corner in overtime, and no Piston fan who has been alive for more than a decade will ever forget what happened next.

The Pistons battled gamely in game six in San Antonio, breaking serve to force game seven, but the Spurs overcame the Pistons at home to win their third title in the Tim Duncan era.

Duncan had a splendid series as he won his third Finals MVP, playing 40.7 minutes per game and averaging 20.6 points, 14.1 rebounds and 2.1 blocks. He was too much for the Pistons defense time after time, and his threat in the post made it impossible for the Pistons to key on the Spurs shooters and prevent them from getting open for three-pointers.

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Without an otherworldly performance from Tim Duncan, the Pistons would have surely celebrated their second consecutive title, but instead the Spurs began to cement themselves as one of the most enduring dynasties the NBA has seen in modern times.