Texas Basketball: Ranking LaMarcus Aldridge’s 3 best NBA teammates ever

During his lengthy and accomplished career in the NBA, former Wake Forest Demon Deacons power forward and seven-footer Tim Duncan proved that the Spurs were right when they took a flier out on him in 1997. With the first overall pick in the 1997 NBA Draft, the Spurs picked up Duncan out of the Wake Forest hoops program.

Duncan would go onto become a Hall-of-Fame inductee, 15-time NBA All-Star selection, 15-time All-NBA Team selection, five-time NBA Champion, one-time All-Star Game MVP, two-time MVP, three-time NBA Finals MVP, Rookie of the Year honoree, and 15-time All-Defensive Team selection. He’s about as automatic as Hall-of-Fame inductees get, outside of other legends like Michael Jordan and Magic Johnson.

The last title that Duncan won with the Spurs came in 2013-14, which was two years before Aldridge landed in San Antonio. By the time that Duncan and Aldridge were teammates, the former was really seeing his production take a downturn. In fact, Duncan’s final year of his playing days in the NBA was Alridge’s first in San Antonio.

There’s other former NBA stars that could be put on this list that Alridge was teammates with for longer, like Brandon Roy of the Blazers and Manu Ginobili of the Spurs. But Duncan is truly one of the NBA’s greatest power forwards, and that presence had to help Aldridge when he was still in his prime years in the NBA.