Tim Duncan, a normcore guy in the NBA

Christiansted is the biggest city of Saint Croix and the largest of the US Virgin Islands. This is what Wikipedia tells us, along with the fact that the islands have always been one of the main tourist attractions of the archipelago, and that the activity has now also turned uses and customs of the place, distorting its original Caribbean essence. It's the globalization, dude, some would say. But what has not changed is the fabric with which the traditional clothes of the Virgin Islands are made, that is often sewn on to the Caribbean dancers. With the same one can make the men's shirts. This is the madras, inherited from the Indian tradition, which often comes up similar to a tartan pattern.

Timothy Theodore Duncan is from Christiansted, where, before becoming one of the most successful players ever in the NBA, was swimming in the currents of the Caribbean seas. The story of Tim Duncan in the NBA has always been at the court of the San Antonio Spurs Coach Popovich is ultra-known: 5 NBA, 3 titles to be MVP, Rookie of the Year, 15-time All Star and a slew of individual awards to which it's hard to keep up. Tim Duncan who has earned the nickname of Big Fundamental, which has wiped out generations and generations of talent with the strength of his calm, with an attitude perhaps little Caribbean but very successful.

In his twenty years of experience in the high of the American basketball league, Duncan went through (as mentioned, harmless) different media and sports cyclones, from Shaquille O'Neal to LeBron James, passing Kobe Bryant and Allen Iverson. And in the league of the spectacle, of the social media and advertising this also means to go through fads destined not to stay. Tim Duncan has seen the imposition of dress code, has seen the players dress up as a gangster, then as PIMP, then grow to become businessmen and degenerate in the hipster wave of Russell Westbrook and company. But Tim Duncan is still the same.

A recent tweet from Joel Embiid (one very good at staying on social) has sought to rediscover a great truth: and if Tim Duncan had been the biggest fashion icons of these years? If the normcore today so is invoked him had always practiced with great elegance and ease?

In 2014, in the middle of the NBA finals between San Antonio and Miami Heat, Busted Coverage described Duncan as an anti-fashion icon, citing Wade phrases - always one of the first in the rankings of the trendiest players - where the #3 of Miami said that " Tim Duncan just does not matter, he can also go around wearing a vest 7 sizes too big, he does not care. "

It seems the right insight, even judging by the outfits chosen by Tim for the delivery of two of the individual awards he has won. In 1998, of course elected Rookie of the Year, he showed up at the awards ceremony with a t-shirt basic, from doubt color, and a pair of sweatpants. No smiles (but this will be a must for the entire career) and he really appears to have been brought there very reluctantly. Also at the award ceremony to be MVP, only four years later, Duncan has not paid particular attention to his look: red shirt basic - too big for anyone - and capri jeans. This time accompanied by a smile and by a pair of Birkenstock.

He never endured the rules, Timmy. At the famous decision of David Stern to introduce Dress Code, he thundered, "I think they are a bunch of crap. I understand what they try to do prohibiting hats, strange hairstyles, vintage shirts and all those things. But I do not understand why they should take it up to this level ", and then, with an exclusive duncanian reliance, concluding" I do not like the direction they are going, but who am I? '.

With paving simplicity and contempt for the institutional rules, Tim Duncan has seen fit to show up at the White House with no need for a bow tie or a tie. Simply TD.

But the greatest of Tim Duncan stylistic success, what brought GQ and The Ringer to pay him articles and reflections is certainly the introduction of the shirts and the over-over-sized clothes in the '10s. Tim Duncan has dressed for 20-year NBA in the same way, with huge shirts - and it's incredible that a boy of 2 meters and 10 more are triple XL shirts to wear - which naturally have handed the scepter of King of normcore NBA. Some of the most iconic examples: the incredible shirt with which he presented at the All Star Game in Houston in 2006 (Tim hates the All Star Game, of course), or the amazingly large collar of the NBA finals in 2003. But the list is long it is above all constantly updated.

Or at least, it was until a few weeks ago. Tim Duncan has decided to retire; it did so without fanfare, without a tour, going floor and noiselessly. No commemorative t-shirt, no statement to the microphone. When all the world has heard about it, maybe she was wearing one of his shirts, with capri too out of fashion and a big smile on his face. Maybe we'll see him on some bench, with those XXXL clothes, to make cool the total uncoolness. Or maybe it'll be in the Caribbean sea, to swim as he did as a kid, then allowing himself dining on the beach, wearing a shirt madras (with a traditional Caribbean pattern) similar to those that he used to wear when they dominated the NBA.