Ten years ago, when Tim Duncan came into the league, he had a request. If he had to have a nickname, then he'd prefer one that matched the tattoo on his chest.
Merlin. He liked the idea of being a magician.
The nickname never took, nor did the one that the Duke student section used to call him in college. Spock, at least, came with some Star Trek humor.
Duncan has spent a career without hearing anything different outside of Tony Parker calling him "Teeemy." But there's something out there that is fitting, if not catchy, and it comes from Charles Barkley.
Groundhog Day.
As in the movie. As in Duncan's repetitive, every-day-seems-the-same-as-the-last-one existence.
And Utah was not the only franchise that felt that Tuesday.
Barkley isn't always as accurate with his words, and he wasn't Monday when he reversed his prediction in this series. He said the Jazz would win this series after having a deer-in-the-headlights look in the opener.
Then the Jazz came out in Game 2 with a similar look — getting blown out in the second quarter by the identical margin of Sunday.
Groundhog Day was in full force, with Duncan naturally behind it. He put together the kind of efficient numbers that define his career, and the numbers reflect this theme.
He averaged 26.8 points against Phoenix, and he had 26 Tuesday. He averaged 13.7 rebounds against Phoenix, and he had 14 Tuesday. Bill Murray woke up to that same song every morning.
"It's incredible, really," Robert Horry said afterward. "What he does night in and night out is incredible, especially in this day and age when defenses are designed sometimes to shut guys down."
Night in and night out? Groundhog stuff, all right.
"Our offense runs through him," Horry continued. "He is the head of our snake, and everyone knows that, yet he still manages. It's a testament to his abilities. His place in history is sure to find him as one of the best power forwards to ever play the game. But don't tell him I said that."
Horry laughed, and contrast in emotion is a few thousand miles away in both location and in luck. Boston thought it would get Duncan in the 1997, and since then Celtics have watched from a distance at what they could have had.
Their luck was supposed to change this spring, and Gregg Popovich acknowledged it should. Asked if karma should be in Boston's favor, considering what happened 10 years ago, Popovich nodded.
"That would be the fair thing," Popovich said of Boston possibly securing the No. 1 pick 10 years. "That would mean there is some fairness in an unfair world."
Popovich would feel this unfair world himself with that statement. The league fined him $10,000 for the statement, since it was clear he was talking about two underclassmen, Greg Oden and Kevin Durant, who had not declared for the draft yet.
So then came Tuesday, when the NBA held its lottery just before the Spurs and Jazz tipped. The Celtics finished fifth, far worse than the odds dictated, on the anniversary of the Duncan lottery they lost.
Greg Oden and Kevin Durant will instead be in the Northwest, in Utah's division. Another break for the Spurs: Phoenix, with a chance to pick up a top 10 player with Atlanta's pick, lost the draft pick this year when the Hawks finished third in the lottery.
The NBA lottery can mean everything, and it can mean nothing. The NBA lottery can bring you Duncan and a decade of sell-outs (or, in the Spurs' case, mostly sell-outs). And it can bring you Kwame Brown or worse.
Boston, again, knows the latter. And within minutes of losing the lottery came the telecast of the Spurs and Jazz and yet another vision of 1997.
The Spurs still celebrate that. They will get three days rest before heading to Utah for Game 3, and they will tweak their plans, and they will plug into the most consistent force in the game.
As it has been for 10 years.
Buck Henry is a columnist for the San Antonio Express-News exchanging columns with the Deseret Morning News during the Western Conference Finals.