Having officially retired, Tim Duncan is able to enjoy life without basketball. His demeanor on the court was mostly an extreme sense of humility, despite being heralded as the greatest power forward to ever play the game.
That humility is apparently still headstrong. Duncan’s former teammate Bruce Bowen is in Rio for the Olympics and shared with SI.com that Duncan turned down an offer to attend the Olympics with President Obama:
“Tim, his legacy is always going to be more of the foundation guy in San Antonio and a guy that wasn’t ever concerned with the limelight. But more importantly concerned with others, making sure that they could really reach the most out of their potential. It’s not often you find individuals like that. And it’s funny that he was offered an opportunity to fly here with the President of the United States, and he discussed it with me and I’m like, ‘You’re going, right?’ He was like, ‘You know I’m not about that stuff.’ Even that moment where you’d say, ‘I sure would like to be a part of that,’ it doesn’t happen with Tim because he’s not concerned with that stuff.”
Hopefully the President wasn’t too insulted by Duncan declining the offer, but President Obama is basketball-savvy enough to understand that it truly wasn’t in his nature to accept. Duncan wasn’t hungry for attention as a player, and that mentality has clearly now transferred into retirement.
