His assortment of personalized knee braces can now be sold on eBay. His franchise will want to do something with his jersey number, too.

He won’t have to worry about plantar fasciitis or knee pain again, unless he can’t help himself, and the paintball competition gets intense. And the next time he sees LeBron James coming off a pick, with an open lane to the rim, he has an easier answer. He can click off his remote.

As for the thousands of miles of air travel he’s compiled over his career? He has only one more trip he absolutely has to make. It will be to Springfield, Massachusetts.

After nearly two decades of sweat and celebration, of private work and public critiques, all with one franchise and one coach and five trophies, Tim Duncan won’t be the only one adjusting to a new world.

San Antonio, too, will never be the same now that the Duncan years are over.

* * * * *

Gregg Popovich once said he wished there was a machine that would allow you to look into Duncan’s head. “And it would print out,” Popovich joked, “what’s going through there.”

The data would be intriguing (for one, there might be geometric formulas for using glass). While Duncan showed so little on the outside, there was always a sense so much more was going on inside.

More Information Commemorative edition The Express-News is producing a special section dedicated to Tim Duncan’s 19 star-studded seasons in San Antonio. It is scheduled for a July 24 release.

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Duncan wasn’t always Spock, as the Duke student section once chanted at him. His eyes welled in the Madison Square Garden locker room after winning his first title, and he had a similar physical reaction for an entirely opposing emotion this spring. In Oklahoma City, after what would be his final game, those in the locker room said they saw some tears.

Mostly, though, the emotion within Duncan was a steady, inner drive. Shaquille O’Neal gave him the more common nickname (Big Fundamental), but maybe Charles Barkley’s fit better.

Groundhog Day. As in the movie. As in Duncan’s repetitive, every-day-seems-the-same-as-the-last-one existence.

That was Duncan, plugging his gifts of length, touch and intelligence into a relentless, two-way force. He loved the game, and he understood that every step changed the angles. His mind might have been his greatest asset.

At his best, as the two-time league MVP, he controlled everything with his hard glare and soft hands. He played as superstars did, with superstar stats, but he also provided the foundation for everything that went on around him.

There wasn’t music in the Duncan locker room. They were there to play basketball, and for each other.

But the same brain that Popovich once wanted to scan could also be oddly vulnerable. Duncan could lose confidence in his free-throw stroke, and he could lose confidence in himself. The 2005 Finals were an example.

With gears sticking in his head, Duncan struggled at times against the rugged Pistons. At the end of one blowout loss in Detroit, Popovich sat next to him on the bench, patting him on his knee, doing his image no favors.

Duncan needed Robert Horry to save him. And one Chicago columnist, measuring Duncan’s legacy nearly a dozen years before his career would be over, called him “Timid Tim” during the Finals.

Duncan countered, winning a Game 7 and another Finals MVP trophy. Yet afterward he went to the podium without a hint of defiance. He stayed true to his core. He stayed humble.

“They,” Duncan said of his teammates, “were more confident in me than I was.”

Shaq and Barkley never would have admitted the same. Michael Jordan never would have even thought it.

Duncan played with two sprained ankles that season, and the knee that had been repaired in 2000 became more of a concern as the years passed. He adjusted by finding new ways to exercise, diet and play.

Here was one adjustment he made to a leg bent by a brace: Duncan learned to move without the heel of his left foot touching the ground.

The Spurs sometimes joked that he turned around as if he were pushing a lawn mower, and “DNP-old” became a punch line. But that was part of the Duncan mind, too. He never minded laughing at himself.

And through it all, his role changing as his teammates did, Groundhog Day still stayed among the game’s best. His per-minute stats remained constant, even as Kawhi Leonard rose next to him, until he put together a remarkable combination of emotions in back-to-back seasons.

On the podium in Miami, vulnerable again, after losing Game 7 — to celebrating a fifth title at home a year later.

What he said about Leonard then: “I’m honored to be on this team right now, because he’s going to be great for years to come.”

Duncan, among the best in NBA history, was the one who felt honored.

* * * * *

“Tick, tick, tick,” Duncan wrote in October of 1997 in a diary for a newspaper. “Each moment brings me closer to the day where I must cease imagining and start performing.”

That’s how long ago his arrival in San Antonio was. He didn’t avoid the media then. He was part of it.

“Anxiety has definitely set in with the opening of training camp upon me,” the rookie continued, “and this feeling is heightened by the excitement that I can sense pulsing through the city of San Antonio.”

That was the young Duncan, full of both promise and anxiety. He could never have imagined then what the next 19 seasons would bring, and San Antonio couldn’t have, either.

He created something that will be remembered longer than his playing career lasted. Duncan won, but he also won with character and consistency and class. In doing so he turned what is basically entertainment into a civic touchstone, and that’s why his playing career is over. But the memories will last forever.

bharvey@express-news.net

Twitter: @Buck_SA