It shouldn’t be a surprise: retired NBA great Tim Duncan kickboxes to stay in shape, and is apparently very good at it, according to his coach
The insinuation is that this is somehow newsworthy because there’s a modicum of surprise that a man like Tim Duncan, who was best identified as a stalwart basketball player, has the audacity to partake in something not-basketball, like kickboxing. And that he’s actually pretty good at it, almost good enough to be “a legit competitor in MMA” according to his coach.
But if anyone who followed Tim Duncan’s career as a basketball player shouldn’t really be at all that surprised to find out that he’s also good at kickboxing, because he’s pretty much good at everything once he gets a grasp of the fundamentals. After all, he wasn’t nicknamed “the Big Fundamental” without just cause.
His fighting stance is probably flawless, and he probably delivers the most fundamentally sound kicks and moves in the most fundamentally fluid ways possible, because that’s just what Tim Duncan does. And when one excels at the fundamentals, the rest of the puzzle just kind solves itself.
Never mind the fact that Tim Duncan is basically 6’12, which when he’s kickboxing essentially turns him into a modern day Sagat from Street Fighter, as a guy with gargantuan reach with his kicks, and his bird-like wingspan giving him punch reach that even Lennox Lewis couldn’t jab his way out of avoiding. I wouldn’t even put it past Tim Duncan to be so good at the fundamentals, that he figures out how to channel fire from his fists and stand 12 feet away spamming TIGER TIGER TIGER TIGER fireballs at his opponents; while standing or crouching.
Really though, Tim Duncan being good at kickboxing should be about as surprising as finding out that water is wet, or Detroit is a depressing place. He’s a man that has spent his whole life being fundamentally good at the fundamentals, that him nailing down the basics of kickboxing and utilizing them to optimal capabilities is the least surprising thing on the planet.
