The San Antonio Spurs have been pulled by Tony Parker for most of the season, but Tim Duncan has been their man over the last few weeks, keeping his excellent form and even improving it with a game winning 3-point play, that almost makes it a certainty the San Antonio Spurs will finish on top of the Western Conference for a second consecutive season.

Only 2.2 seconds on the clock, the Clippers are leading the San Antonio Spurs 102-101, hoping to avenge a 26 points home loss. But to no avail. Tim Duncan went for the 16-foot jumper, was fouled by Willie Green and still made the shot, not to mention the free throw afterwards. A couple of hard fouls Duncan sorta complained about later during the second quarter, the Spurs evened their season series with the Clippers, and opened a 2.5 game lead over the Thunder on top of the West with a 104-102 win.

Tony Parker? OK. The point guard, finding his rhythm again after missing three weeks of basketball scored 24 points, adding 8 assists, beating Chris Paul in the individual duel, as the “best point guard in the NBA’ according to most, and on most days, finished with 14 points and a sour taste in his mouth, claiming Duncan traveled on the game winning shot. It was a testy game, in which Duncan was hit more than a few times by DeAndre Jordan, Blake Griffin and others, deserving because of the refs ignoring his plight time and time again.

There was a stretch where they put the whistle away. It gave me a little energy to kind of play a little harder. I got some shots to go early and it just kind of snowballed from there.

Duncan scored 34 points and added 11 rebounds on 12-19 shooting. He’s averaging 23.6 points and 12.2 rebounds per game over the last five, and might be deserving of his first All-NBA first team selection since 2007 showing that even at his age, you can still be the best big man in the NBA.

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