After Kobe Bryant’s retirement at the end of last season, the NBA lost another living legend today when Tim Duncan officially announced he’s calling it quits. The Big Fundamental had a career on the court that rivals some of the all-time greats—including Kobe—but unlike the Black Mamba, most of us won’t remember him for the sneakers he wore throughout his career. Spending most of his nineteen years on the court with the San Antonio Spurs wearing adidas, his sneakers were most often quite an accurate representation of his game: very effective with great performance, but not flashy, or even that memorable at all. No offense to adidas, but can you even recite the name of one of his signature models with the Three Stripes?
However, this wasn’t the case early in Timmy’s career, when he was endorsing Nike Basketball and wearing some of their boldest models of the late-1990’s to early-2000’s era. On this day of Tim Duncan’s retirement, let’s look back to his most memorable sneakers in this brief history of his time with Nike.