PtR Poll: The Most Underrated and Overrated Spurs of All Time

Welcome back to the PtR poll, where we’re following an online trend where fans vote on players from their team to fill out a grid like the one below. We started with the best and worst Spurs of all time and came up with two unsurprising answers.

There’s little doubt that Tim Duncan, who received a whopping 93% of the vote, is the best player to ever wear the silver and black jersey – he’s won 5 championships, 3x Finals MVP, 2x MVP, 15x All-NBA, and 15x All-Defense – but there was a little debate about what actually constitutes the “worst” player. Still, Joshua Primo ended up winning with a relatively comfortable 47% of the vote. The 12th overall pick in 2021 – way ahead of everyone else – he showed some promise as a rookie, winning over fans with his potential and cheerful attitude before suddenly being released for lascivious behavior early in his second season. It doesn’t get much worse than that.

Next up is a slightly more complicated (in my opinion) topic: the most underrated and overrated Spurs of all time. As far as underrated goes, I had a hard time looking past how overlooked some of the Spurs’ stars were (and still are). There’s the Spurs’ original star, George “The Iceman” Gervin. It might have helped if he had spent his entire career in the NBA instead of splitting time with the ABA, but he’s still an all-time star who is often overlooked in this day and age.

Then there are two of the Spurs’ newer stars, Tony Parker and Manu Ginobili. They were never underrated by Spurs fans, but from the outside, they often seemed to be overlooked (unless it fits the narrative to hype them up because someone says Duncan is overrated – funny how that works). The fact that neither of them made the 75th anniversary team seemed extremely disrespectful, especially considering that several of them made the team before them.

Finally, I tried to include a supporting player here, and I chose one that I think is underrated even by Spurs fans: Tiago Splitter. Many only remember that the Spurs put Boris Diaw in the starting lineup for the last two rounds of the 2014 playoffs, and take that as a sign that Splitter wasn’t good enough. On the contrary, that was just a matchup move, and many forget how important he was in the first two rounds against the bigger Mavericks and Trail Blazers, while Diaw couldn’t keep up with their big starters.

The most overrated are the players who came in expecting to help the Spurs continue their winning streak but either didn’t contribute as much as expected or couldn’t even keep them in the winning category. First off, a couple of players in the first category: LaMarcus Aldridge and DeMar DeRozan. Both have had success as stars on other teams, but that was when they were more of the 1Bs on their previous teams and had more star support. While both were given nearly impossible tasks of replacing big names (Duncan and Kawhi Leonard, respectively), it’s probably worth remembering that Aldridge came in of his own accord, while DeRozan had no other choice.

Next up is someone who was highly coveted in the “worst” category: Richard Jefferson. While he was far from the worst Spur of all time, he certainly had much higher expectations than he delivered. Part of that can be blamed on Gregg Popovich, who tried to turn someone who was a first or second choice before his arrival into a simple 3-and-D player, but he still completely disappointed.

He was traded for someone who probably overestimates himself more than anything else: Stephen Jackson. Although Jax contributed a lot to the 2003 championship as a role player, he left the team hoping to become the top prospect elsewhere. Instead, he became a migrant worker due to behavioral and attitude issues, but everyone was initially excited to have him back in San Antonio in 2012, including himself. However, he soon distanced himself from him again because he no longer had a role, and he has complained about it ever since.

Be sure to cast your vote and remember: If “Other” wins in any of the polls, I will check the comments here and on social media and the post with the most likes will win.