Maybe blame is not really the issue regarding Duncan, who is widely respected but not quite revered outside South Texas. Had he been playing in New York, his quiet dignity and resolve would have made him the second coming of Willis Reed. But, yes, it’s also been his decision to treat the self-promotional side of the business somewhere on the torture scale between root canal and waterboarding.

“He doesn’t have the same sort of reputation as Magic, Michael and Larry because he’s so low-key,” Kerr said, referring to Johnson, Jordan and Bird. “The charisma those guys had, the endorsements, made them global icons. Tim prefers to go about his business and play.”

Casual and younger fans don’t see sex appeal in a player nicknamed the Big Fundamental. If nuance appealed to the masses, existentialist indie films would fill the multiplex instead of shootouts and car crashes. But N.B.A. coaches who select the substitutes should want to honor Duncan’s consistency, his longevity, every chance they get.

Yet last season, which conceivably could have been Duncan’s last, they left him off the All-Star team only months after he came within seconds of a title in Miami and months before he would win that elusive fifth ring 15 years after claiming his first.

Oh, but Duncan would rather have had the time off, go to the beach, went the rationale of those who weren’t appalled by the slight. All probably true, but that still was no excuse for not extending the invitation.

Nets Coach Lionel Hollins recently lobbied for Commissioner Adam Silver to add Kevin Garnett to this year’s Eastern Conference roster in recognition of career achievement. Garnett’s late-career performance is nowhere near Duncan’s, but it wasn’t a bad idea. It’s an All-Star Game, not an election to Congress. One such appointment per squad would hardly change the game’s dynamic.

Duncan said being selected as a substitute by the coaches meant more than the fans’ popularity contest to choose the starters. He didn’t expect it, he said, “but it’s an honor, them believing that I am still of All-Star caliber.”