Tim Duncan Is Still Going, Steady as Ever One night's work: 28 points, 13 rebounds, 6 assists, 3 blocks, 1 steal. Guesses at the N.B.A. player behind those numbers on Wednesday night might include LeBron James, Kevin Durant, Kevin Love or Dwight Howard. None would be right. That line belonged to Tim Duncan, who put up yet another vintage gem in San Antonio's 117-110 win over the Bucks in Milwaukee. To say Duncan's season has been something of a renaissance would be an understatement: his 21.4 points per 36 minutes are on a pace to be the highest since 2004-5; his 11.6 rebounds would equal his output in 2009-10; and his overall player efficiency rating (PER) of 25.5 would be tops since 2006-7, the last season San Antonio won the N.B.A. finals. At the same time, calling it a bounce-back year suggests a fluctuation in production wholly antithetical to what Duncan is as a basketball player. Since entering the league as the No. 1 pick in 1997 after a stellar four-year collegiate career at Wake Forest, Duncan has never had a PER below 21.9; never marshaled a win shares per 48 (an estimate of the number of wins contributed by a player per 48 minutes) of .171 (the league average is about .100); never drop-stepped, baby-hooked and banked his way to less than 17.1 points per 36. Oh, and all of those numbers came from one season (2010-11), when Duncan was 34 years old. Take a quick scroll through his career stats, a few superlatives are bound to ring true: consistent, steady, solid. But seldom flashy. Duncan has never led the league in a major statistical category, and has seldom dunked his way onto a TV highlight reel. Labels like "first ballot Hall of Famer" might register equally quickly to those capable of contextualizing Duncan's accomplishments, which include a pair of Most Valuable Player awards (in 2002 and 2003) and four championship rings. But it's precisely because that statistical steadiness emanates from such a floor-bound, workmanlike repertory that Duncan somehow must always be appreciated anew - like the binary code that makes reading this post possible, we take Duncan's basketball DNA for granted. Even his nickname, the Big Fundamental, paints a picture of vanilla plainness, particularly in an era when the Truth, the Answer and Black Mamba have all become calling cards. But anyone who read Chris Ballard's engrossing profile of Duncan understands that this is how he prefers it. It's not that he thinks basketball should be all work and no play; rather, it is only through work - beyond camera and, as the years drag on, farther below the rim - that the true joys and rewards of playing can be experienced. On Thursday night Duncan will take the Madison Square Garden floor for the 16th time in his N.B.A. career. He will face a struggling Knicks team learning how to reincorporate an All-Star power forward - Amar'e Stoudemire - back into the fold on the fly. One team is 21-10 - their best start in over a decade - and learning to cope with the bright lights and skyscraper expectations of being a good team playing for a title-starved, painfully loyal fan base in the league's biggest market. The other is 26-8, positioning itself for yet another postseason run at a fifth title in 15 years, and vying for headlines in a market few outside of South Texas can be bothered to care about - particularly during the N.B.A. season's winter doldrums. One team has struggled for years to regain relevance; the other typifies it. One team is learning how to mine wins from consistency; the other defines it. One team's star is a polarizing scorer who touts myriad endorsements and is using a career year to help erase a past checkered by on-court drama. The other is Tim Duncan.