Frenchman Tony Parker played a pivotal role in San Antonio’s decade-long success and had a major impact on France’s basketball landscape.
SAN ANTONIO — Tony Parker knew the NBA was tough. Playing for Gregg Popovich seemed impossible.
“I’m never gonna satisfy him,” Parker thought at times as a rookie when steamy, post-practice showers camouflaged the tears welling in his eyes after another tongue lashing from the infamous coach.
Four NBA titles and 22 years later, Parker can now openly shed tears of joy with Popovich as members of the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame’s Class of 2023. Parker represents the final piece of the San Antonio’s vaunted Big 3 (which includes Tim Duncan and Manu Ginobili) to receive the honor of induction, after an 18-year career that netted a franchise record for assists (6,829), and top-five Spurs rankings in games played (1,198), scoring (18,943 points) and steals (1,032).
Parker completed his storied career as one of five players in league history to produce at least 19,000 points and 7,000 assists, along with Oscar Robertson, John Stockton, LeBron James and Gary Payton.
That’s on top of the titles, making history as the first European to win NBA Finals MVP in 2007, six All-Star nods and four All-NBA selections.
Relive Tony Parker's career with the Spurs.
“I make the joke, but it’s true,” Popovich said. “I should’ve been arrested for abuse [for] the things I did to that kid.”
Still, Parker continues to express gratitude for the tough love that pushed him to the pinnacle of the sport. That, combined with Parker’s speed, toughness, tenacity, resilience and drive to improve propelled the point guard to heights never reached by a French player in the NBA.
A ‘not-so-perfect’ fit in San Antonio
Tony Parker's NBA journey began in 2001 after he was picked No. 28 overall.
Interestingly, NBA glory for Parker came close to never happening.
A pro since age 15 for Paris Basket Racing, Parker took part in a private workout with San Antonio in Chicago where former Spurs front-office employee Lance Blanks dominated and embarrassed the then 19-year-old. Popovich came away from that session convinced Parker was “too soft” to man the point guard spot for the Spurs.
Worse, Popovich hated Parker’s nonchalant reaction to such a rough showing.
The coach wanted to move on. But current Oklahoma City Thunder general manager Sam Presti, who at the time worked in Spurs’ scouting under current CEO R.C. Buford, wouldn’t relent. Having spent such extensive time breaking down and studying the point guard’s game, Buford jumped in on Popovich, too, even though the Spurs’ coach explained — point-by-point — his reasoning for why Parker couldn’t fit with the Spurs. Afterwards, Presti cut together a videotape that addressed each of the coach’s complaints — point-by-point.
That convinced Popovich to grant Parker another workout, where the point guard finally proved himself.
The coach immediately jumped on board, even mentioning to San Antonio’s staff that Parker likely would need no more than 10 games as a rookie to become a starter for whatever team drafted him.
“A lot of people talk about Pop obviously because he’s the big boss, one of the best coaches ever, but the first one to find me is R.C. Buford,” Parker said, while addressing Buford and Presti at his jersey retirement ceremony.
“I was terrible in my first workout with the Spurs. Pop didn’t want to hear about Tony Parker. He was like, ‘I’m done, I want another point guard.’ And R.C., man, you kept talking to Pop, kept showing him the videos. I’m so lucky you gave me a second workout and I was able to show you I wanted to be a Spurs point guard.”
Parker earned his 1st NBA start just 5 games into his rookie campaign on Nov. 11, 2001 against the Magic.
With San Antonio sitting at 2-2 after a loss to Sacramento during Parker’s rookie season in 2001-02, Popovich summoned the point guard to the back of the team plane bound for Orlando. There, the coach delivered the news Parker would start at point guard.
Selected No. 28 overall in 2001 as a 19-year-old from France, Parker took the reins in just the fifth game of his rookie season … and gripped them tightly for the next 17 years.
Parker immediately asked whether franchise stalwart Duncan agreed with the decision.
“The story he tells is that I didn’t speak to him for the first year of his career here,” Duncan said. “Pop saw something in him, and through the first couple of years, the respect just grew and grew and grew. He was the hardest-coached individual of anybody I’ve seen in this entire program, and Pop apologized for that. Rightfully so, he did. He accepted every bit of it. He grew so quickly, and I had no idea this kid would be the point guard I [would] love to play with for the rest of my career.”
Frenchman finds NBA success
Tony Parker (right) becomes the final member of the Spurs’ Big 3 to enter the Hall of Fame, joining Manu Ginobili (center) and Tim Duncan.
Parker, Duncan and Ginobili formed the winningest postseason trio in NBA history (126 wins), with the Lakers’ Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Magic Johnson, and Michael Cooper (110) trailing at No. 2, followed by Golden State’s Stephen Curry, Klay Thompson, and Draymond Green (98) at third.
Duncan and Ginobili will present Parker for induction at Mohegan Sun Casino and Resort. The Big 3 alongside David Robinson will later serve as presenters for Popovich’s entry into the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame.
“He’s special,” Popovich said of Parker. “For him to take over the program at 19 and run the show is very special. During training camp and the first couple of games, I was really tough on him; gave him a lot of things to think about, a lot of things to do, put him on the best players on the other team whenever I could.
“And he showed he had the fortitude and courage to do this, and that the challenge of taking over a team that’s supposed to be successful wasn’t gonna matter to him. I gave him the ball and said, ‘This is yours. Figure it out, and I’m gonna love you, and I’m gonna dump on you both at the same time.’ That’s what we did.”
By his second season, Parker started all 82 games on the way to capturing his first title, improving his first-year scoring average from 9.2 points per game to 15.5 ppg while increasing assists from 4.3 per game to 5.3. He started at least 75 contests in each of the next four seasons, winning another title (2005) in addition to earning All-Star recognition on two occasions.
By the time Parker reached 30, he’d already won three championships over a span of five years, while collecting another three All-Star nods. In fact, four of the biggest moments of Parker’s career took place before his 27th birthday.
He wouldn’t retire until age 37.
Building a legacy
Parker won Finals MVP after leading San Antonio to its 4th NBA title in 2007.
There were the performances in Games 1 and 2 of the 2004 Western Conference semifinals, where Parker dropped a combined 50 points in a losing series against the Los Angeles Lakers. Then in 2007, Parker won NBA Finals MVP after averaging 24.5 ppg and shooting 57.5% overall while dishing five assists per game in a 4-0 sweep of James and the Cleveland Cavaliers.
Parker turned 25 during that third championship run. He’d wait another seven years for his fourth ring.
In 2008, the he reeled off the highest-scoring game by a Spurs player (55 points) since 1994 (Robinson’s franchise-record 71-point game) against the Minnesota Timberwolves during an outing in which he also tallied 10 assists and seven rebounds.
And who could forget the Western Conference semifinals that postseason when Parker outdueled a young Chris Paul and the New Orleans Hornets to lift the Spurs in a tightly contested series?
Parker also played a key role in the French national team developing into one of the better squads on the international stage: Behind Parker, France bested Spain for the first time in 2013 on the way to capturing its first Eurobasket Title. He walked away as MVP of the tournament and FIBA’s European Player of the Year.
Throughout his career, Parker displayed a strong desire to evolve his game. We know all about his trademark teardrop shot, interior passing prowess and penchant for pouring in buckets from the paint. But Parker struggled as a shooter early on, shooting just 41.9% as a rookie. He eventually re-invented his shot under former Spurs shooting coach Chip Engelland, now an assistant with the Oklahoma City Thunder.
He would go on to shoot 50% or better in five seasons, while connecting at 49.9% during the 2013-14 campaign on the way to winning that fourth (and final) NBA championship.
“T.P., we’ve had our priorities straight man,” Ginobili said to Parker last summer during his Hall of Fame speech. “We never let our egos get in the way. We knew when it was your time, when it was my time. But it was [Duncan’s] time most of the time. We got the job done, man. It was a pleasure.”
Over 17 NBA seasons in San Antonio and one in Charlotte, Parker averaged 15.5 ppg, 2.7 rpg and 5.6 apg, and is No. 8 in league history with 892 regular-season victories. Parker played in 226 postseason contests for the Spurs, which registers as the sixth-most in league annals and posted 17.9 ppg, 5.1 apg and 2.9 rpg in the playoffs.
He ranks sixth in postseason assists (1,143), 10th in points (4,045) and is one of just four players in NBA playoff history to produce 4,000 points and 1,000 assists, joining James, Michael Jordan and Kobe Bryant.
The most successful French player to ever lace them up in the NBA, Parker pondered in his book “Tony Parker: Beyond All of My Dreams” whether a fellow countryman would ever duplicate his accomplishments on the game’s biggest stage.
Yesss he’s going to the @spurs !!! So proud of you💪🏽 pic.twitter.com/vblbw0lcbL
— Tony Parker (@tonyparker) May 17, 2023
The book published in 2019, and four years later, the San Antonio Spurs would draft another 19-year old French phenom in Victor Wembanyama with the No. 1 overall pick of the 2023 NBA Draft. Parker is the majority owner of French club ASVEL Villeurbanne, and spent time getting to know Wembanyama during his one season with the team.
“I think the endurance at the height of my career will be the hardest thing to attain for the next great French basketball player,” Parker wrote in his book. “I hope there will be another French NBA champion and All-Star. I hope so for French basketball. But it’s going to be hard to catch up with my endurance. Playing 20 pro seasons, winning four NBA titles, and staying at the top for so long is no easy feat.”
Popovich understands.
It’s why his satisfaction with the point guard on this day is finally forever guaranteed.
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Michael C. Wright is a senior writer for NBA.com. You can e-mail him here, find his archive here and follow him on Twitter.
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