Green says trash talk never worked on Duncan: 'He just stared at me'

As Tim Duncan ponders his NBA future, his reverential colleagues are pondering an NBA without him.

"If this is it for Tim Duncan, he has meant a lot to the game, the way he has carried himself and what he has done for the Spurs for a number of years," Golden State Warriors power forward Draymond Green wrote in his diary for The Undefeated. "He is the centerpiece of the golden standard in the NBA. He has done some tremendous things for the game and he's arguably the greatest power forward of all time."

Green went on to recount his favorite memory of Duncan, hearkening back to his own rookie season in 2012-13, when the two first crossed paths on an NBA court. Green, one of the league's most notorious trash-talkers, explained why Duncan was effectively impervious to his head games.

"My rookie year I kind of talked junk to everybody," Green wrote. "In the middle of the game I started talking to Tim, and I had already got into it with somebody on their team. I don't remember who it was. But I started talking to Tim and he kind of just stared at me. I just kept talking junk to him and he kept staring at me.

"At that point I realized during the rest of my career that I might as well not talk to him. Either, one, he is not going to talk back because he has no respect for me. Or, two, he is not going to talk back because that is who he is. Or, three, both. I figured then that was the last time I would talk junk to Tim. And that was the last time."

Duncan's Spurs and Green's Warriors met in the playoffs that season, with the Spurs prevailing in six surprisingly tight games. They were denied the rematch they seemed destined for this season when the Spurs fell to the Oklahoma City Thunder in six games in the Western Conference semis.

After the disappointing exit, Duncan said he needed to "figure life out" before deciding about retirement.