It has been five days since Tim Duncan descended from a postgame interview podium and into the Los Angeles night.

In the immediate aftermath of the Spurs’ season-ending loss to the Clippers, Duncan offered nary a scrap of insight about the life decision that awaits him. As expected, the days since have offered nothing but more silence.

Duncan, 39, will take most of the summer to weigh whether to return for a 19th NBA season or walk away.

At least one person familiar with Duncan’s thinking has a guess as to what the Spurs legend will do.

“I would be very surprised if he retired,” said Antonio Daniels, Duncan’s friend and former teammate with the Spurs. “As long as he’s staying at a level where he feels like he’s relevant and competing, I can’t see it.”

If relevance is the overriding criteria, the Spurs might as well keep Duncan’s locker warm until October.

He is coming off an All-Star season that ranks as the top age-38 campaign in league history, during which he averaged 13.9 points, 9.1 rebounds and nearly two blocks.

Duncan played in 77 games and totaled 2,227 minutes, his most on both counts since 2009-10, when he was a spry 33-year-old.

He is only days removed from a seven-game series against the Clippers that he dominated to the tune of 17.9 points and 11 rebounds — including a heroic 27-point, 11-rebound double-double in the Game 7 defeat.

“I continue to be amazed by Tim Duncan,” coach Gregg Popovich said earlier this week. “He was our most consistent player in the playoffs, at 39. He needed a little more help, and I feel badly he didn’t get it. It wasn’t for a lack of trying.

“To watch him is pretty spectacular, in itself.”

Duncan is not the only Spurs mainstay wrangling with the future this summer.

In a self-penned column for the national newspaper of his native Argentina on Wednesday, Manu Ginobili wrote that he plans to take at least a month to determine if he “feels like a former player or not.”

“There are decisions you can’t rush,” Ginobili wrote in Spanish for La Nacion in Buenos Aires. “Today I do not feel like there is a right decision.”

Ginobili, who will turn 38 in July, has played all 13 of his NBA seasons with the Spurs, alongside Duncan and Tony Parker and for Popovich.

Per Ginobili’s column on Wednesday, Popovich has told him and Duncan the team would like both of them back.

Ginobili says Duncan’s decision will go a long way to helping him make up his own mind.

“I guess we’ll have a little talk with Tim, who seems to be on the same ledge as me,” Ginobili wrote. “We’ll see where the wind blows.”

And so the Spurs’ future, as it has so many times before, all comes back to Duncan.

There are those close to him who can’t envision the Spurs captain walking away just yet.

Daniels, now 40 and co-host of a local radio talk show on KZDC-AM 1250, first met Duncan when the two were roommates at the 1997 NBA draft combine.

They were teammates for four seasons from 1998 to 2002, two-doors-down neighbors for longer that that and remain close.

Daniels, who last played for Philadelphia in 2011, says he has spoken with Duncan about his own retirement experience.

“You miss the competitiveness and the camaraderie,” said Daniels, who once went to the Development League in attempt to get back to the NBA. “You fear that transition. Every athlete does. You’ve been playing basketball since you were 6. What’s next?”

This summer, that is the multimillion-dollar question for two-thirds of the Spurs’ Big Three.

Duncan’s decision — like Ginobili’s — is no slam dunk.

There is no denying the toll accrued by 1,572 NBA games, including 241 playoff contests.

Duncan has played the last half of his career on a chronically bad left knee. Facing a similar crossroads after the 2014 championship season, Duncan took deliberations all the way until the June 24 deadline before choosing to opt in to the final season of his contract.

If this summer goes the other way, and this turns out to be it for Duncan, Daniels has a feeling how that will play out, too.

“He’s not going to be like Kareem and go out on a big retirement tour,” Daniels said, referring to Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, the Lakers Hall of Famer who retired at age 42. “He’s going to wake up one morning and say, 'You know what? I don’t have it anymore. I’m done.’”

jmcdonald@express-news.net

Twitter: @JMcDonald_SAEN