I’m glad you bring up Amare. Amare is a 4. In style of play and in body size and in ability to defend size. We’ve played him at the 5 for years. Thus, in effect, Phoenix has been playing 2 guards and 3 forwards instead of 2 G, 2F and 1C. The point there is that the players a team on the court, while they are labeled as 2G’s, 2F’s, and 1C, aren’t always those positions. So, even when the Admiral was playing for the Spurs, the Spurs were playing 2G, 1F and 2C. RIght now, when Oberto and Duncan are playing, Spurs are playing a PF at C and a C at PF. When Thomas and Duncan play, they are playing 2 C’s at PF and C. The confusion arises from the fact that boxscores require you to label at least one of the players on the court as a “C”. The Spurs have decided that as long as there is another C or PF on court, Duncan will not be labeled “C.”

Also, when you consider “era,” for the majority of Duncan’s career, he has played in an era when PF was not much of a power position and most teams stacked more versatile players at that position. Given this, I feel Duncan is a C.

Look, Duncan is a great player and his name has been written in the history books time and again. He can hold his own on the historic list of all-time great centers.

When we compare him to the list of all-time great 4’s, though, we see that Duncan is very different in terms of body size and style of play than a large number of people on that list. However, when we consider Duncan with the all-time great 5’s, this difference is smaller. So why label him a 4 just so we can say he is the greatest ever at his position?

When Duncan started, the Spurs DID have an established C – name was David Robinson… an Amare-type player, but with a better jumper, better defense, and better decision making. You might not remember him…

I counted up KG’s minutes vs. Duncan’s minutes during their first 11 years in the league and Duncan came out about 5,000 ahead. It’s interesting to note that about 4,000 of these were from the playoffs and their regular season minutes played were almost equal. A fairer comparison by minutes of the two would be the Current Duncan vs. KG in the middle of the 06-07 season. Still, Duncan seems to be aging faster than KG was then (perhaps due to more banging in the post). Even Shaq had played fewer minutes (3000 fewer) through his first 11 seasons. Interesting. I didn’t expect that. So I guess what’s not mentioned is not the fact that Duncan is aging fast but instead that the Spurs have used him very heavily in his ten years.

Also read dang’s post below. If we keep college minutes in mind, Duncan has likely played way more minutes through his first 11 years (NBA + college minutes) than either Shaq or Garnett. Thus, current Duncan is closer in “age” to Shaq after being traded from the Lakers and Garnett in (gasp) the future. Keeping that in mind, I would actually say that Duncan has aged somewhat gracefully instead of fast. Haha. How funny. I ended up believing the exact opposite of what I started off believing.

I posted this before reading ahead. Stymo and RTG completed the argument.