Despite approaching 39 years of age, Tim Duncan has been one of the most durable players on the San Antonio Spurs roster this season.
The ageless power forward has only missed a total of six games, is second in both minutes per game and starts made for his team, and still leads everyone on his team with a 21.7 PER.
The relatively injury-free season came to a bit of a halt on Tuesday, though, when Tiago Splitter bounced off an Amir Johnson screen and hit an unsuspecting Duncan in the process.
The game was all but over when the incident occurred, as the Spurs led against the Toronto Raptors 109-96 with less than a minute remaining. Duncan has been diagnosed with a hyperextension of his left elbow. Luckily, it is not expected to be a serious issue.
Duncan’s girlfriend Vanessa Macias wasn’t happy with the injury, nor the lack of foul calls made in the NBA:
I’ve said it a lot. If fouls aren’t called, things get out of hand. It’s not about BS calls&market shares. It’s about PEOPLE getting hurt.
— Vanessa Macias (@VanessaLMacias) March 11, 2015
Calling and not calling fouls can be a tricky thing. Some call the league soft when fouls are excessively called, while others say it slows the game down. Then there are those who are frustrated when no fouls are called despite obvious fouls being committed. It’s not an exact science, but it’s fair to say the league generally does a pretty good job when it comes to calling the game as correctly as possible.
It’s not clear if Macias was using Duncan’s case as an example to make a point about fouls not being called enough. Either way, her logic (with all due respect) doesn’t really work too well in this case because Splitter appeared to flop a bit (as he so often does) on the screen before running into Duncan, and the whole thing looked more like a freak incident than anything else. It certainly didn’t happen due to any kind of excessive foul (although it’s fair to say that Johnson was leaning forward a bit as he prepared to take contact), and calling a foul in that particular case would not have stopped any of it from actually happening anyway.
Jim Park is a blogger and editor of Sheridan Hoops. Follow him on twitter @SheridanBlog.