Tim Duncan, Olympic swimmer

This week marks the 30th anniversary of Hurricane Hugo, which wrecked Guadeloupe, Monserrat, the US Virgin Islands, Puerto Rico, and the South Carolina coast.

As I have posted several times, Hugo affected the career path of Tim Duncan. The St. Croix native was training to become an Olympic swimmer (his sister Tricia had swum for the US Virgin Islands in 1988 in Seoul) and used St. Croix's Olympic-sized swimming pool to train in. However, on September 18, 1989, Hurricane Hugo hit St. Croix as a Category 4 hurricane. Hugo destroyed or badly damaged 60 to 90 percent of the buildings on the islands, killed two people, injured 80 others, and destroyed the Olympic-sized pool Tim Duncan was training in.

Duncan tried to swim in the Atlantic Ocean, but his fear of sharks caused him to eventually switch to basketball, where he excelled in high school and won a scholarship to Wake Forest University. After graduating from Wake Forest (he and his siblings had promised their dying mother (she was dying of breast cancer) that they would graduate from college with a degree), he was drafted with the first pick in the 1997 NBA draft by the San Antonio Spurs; he is, to this day, the best player besides George "Iceman" Gervin and David Robinson (whom he won the 1999 and 2003 NBA championship with) that the Spurs have ever had, IMO, winning 5 NBA titles (1999, 2003, 2005, 2007, and 2014) and becoming a leading scorer for the Spurs (he'll never have to buy a beer in Central Texas, IMO)...

But, WI Hugo misses St. Croix? Duncan's swimming career is unaffected, so how well does he do as a swimmer?
 
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Driftless

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Not knowing Tim's skill as a swimmer, he's certainly got several of the other critical attributes for potential success. World-class athletic ability, huge wing-span, great personal drive, tremendous discipline, and intelligence.
 
Not knowing Tim's skill as a swimmer, he's certainly got several of the other critical attributes for potential success. World-class athletic ability, huge wing-span, great personal drive, tremendous discipline, and intelligence.

Some of those attributes served him well in the NBA and make him an NBA Hall of Famer...
 
. . . the best player besides David Robinson (whom he won the 1999 and 2003 NBA championship with) the Spurs have ever had, IMO, . . .
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George Gervin, aka “The Iceman” should at least receive an honorable mention! :)
 
Not knowing Tim's skill as a swimmer, he's certainly got several of the other critical attributes for potential success. World-class athletic ability, huge wing-span, great personal drive, tremendous discipline, and intelligence.
But isn’t Michael Phelps double-jointed in a couple of very advantageous ways? And Tim being even taller may not be enough to make up for this.

Meaning, like baseball pitching, swimming is pretty much maxed out as a sport. And basketball isn’t to the same extent.
 
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