It is truly the end of an era. Point guard Tony Parker has decided to call it a career.
He told Marc J. Spears of The Undefeated this in regards to his decision:
“A lot of different stuff ultimately led me to this decision,but, at the end of the day, I was like, if I can’t be Tony Parker anymore and I can’t play for a championship, I don’t want to play basketball anymore.”
Parker was taken 28th overall in the 2001 NBA Draft. Over the next seventeen seasons in San Antonio , he would help bring four titles ( winning the 2007 Finals MVP) ,be named to six All-Star teams, four All-NBA selections. He would average 15.8 points, 5.7 assists and 2.8 rebounds during his time as a San Antonio Spur.
It seemed that like David Robinson, Tim Duncan, and Manu Ginobili, Parker would be a Spurs lifer, even saying last March he wanted to play 20 seasons with San Antonio. However Parker and the Spurs decided to part ways and signed a two-year deal with the Charlotte Hornets, to “experience something new.”
In his one season in the Queen City, he serves as Kemba Walker’s backup, playing in 56 games and averaging 9.5 points and 3.7 assists in a career-low 17.9 minutes per games but he did not appear in the team’s last 13 games.
After initially saying he was 50-50 on returning to the Hornets , it seemed that Parker decided that at 37, playing on a rebuilding team with a likely diminished role was not what he wanted and decided to hang it up.
With that, the last of the Spurs’ big three, which won 701 regular season games, has retired from the NBA.
