As usual, Bill Simmons delivers on the sports:pop culture analogies (in a way that I find Klosterman rarely does). His point: Duncan is underrated:

Once upon a time, Harrison Ford pumped out monster hits for 15 solid years before everyone suddenly noticed, “Wait a second, Harrison Ford is unquestionably the biggest movie star of his generation!” [… I]t wasn’t until he carried The Fugitive that everyone realized he was more bankable than Stallone, Reynolds, Eastwood, Cruise, Costner, Schwarzenegger and every other competitor from that time. As with Duncan, we didn’t know much about Ford outside of his work. As with Duncan, there wasn’t anything inherently interesting about him. But Ford always delivered the goods and, eventually, we appreciated him for it.

Outstanding. And lest you be so turned off by the underrated conversation that you don’t click through, note that Simmons, like you, thinks it’s really hard for anyone to be underrated these days. He writes that “a hyperactive sports world means that, if anything, underrated players (like Ben Wallace, for instance) quickly become overrated because everyone spends so much time discussing how underrated they are. Well, I say Tim Duncan is underrated. You know what else? He’s wildly underrated.”