He spent 19 seasons in the NBA and amassed the following achievements:

• 5 NBA titles
• 3 NBA Finals MVPs
• 2 league MVP awards
• 1 All Star Game MVP Award
• 15 All Star selections
• Rookie of the Year in 1998

And all of this occurred after a stellar college career at Wake Forest University, where he was named National College Player of the Year in 1997.  This week Tim Duncan decided to call it a career and announced his retirement from the only team he’s known, the San Antonio Spurs.

But all of this almost never happened.  Duncan was a swimmer with dreams of making the 1992 US Olympic Swim Team.  He didn’t pick up a basketball until the age of 14.  And the only reason he did that is because Hurricane Hugo destroyed the only Olympic size swimming pool in his home of St. Croix in the US Virgin Islands.

I guess you could say thank God for hurricanes.  Because of Hugo, it gave us basketball fans a treat.  We were witness to the greatest power forward to ever play the game.  He could score, rebound, block shots, and that patented bank shot from the elbow was almost automatic.  All these are reasons why he was affectionately known as the “Big Fundamental”.  Not flashy, but sound in every aspect of his game.

Even though this past season was not his best with injury and Father Time seeming to catch up, it was believed that Timmy might give it one more go.  But in his announcement he revealed that he just wasn’t having fun anymore.  When you no longer want to do it, it’s time to hang it up.

While the game will miss him, I’m sure that his next chapter will be as fundamentally sound as the first.