‘When you get to 20, it’s wow’: What it takes to play in the NBA for two decades

Kevin Willis during his time with the Toronto Raptors. He would play his final game in the NBA for the Dallas Mavericks at the age of 44. Photograph: Reuters/Alamy

Kevin Willis remembers encouraging Tim Duncan to keep going. The two former All-NBA players, who won a championship together in San Antonio in 2003, chatted when Duncan’s career was winding down in 2016. “The Big Fundamental” was to retire after his 19^th season, and Willis practically pleaded with Duncan to give it one more year so that he could enter one of the few NBA “clubs” that’s eluded him. The 20-plus-seasons club.

Willis had been one of only eight members of the club, alongside Vince Carter, Jamal Crawford, Robert Parish, Kobe Bryant, Dirk Nowitzki, Kevin Garnett and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar. That was it – until this season. Two more players are adding their names to that vaunted group. One is the undrafted Miami Heat lifer Udonis Haslem. And the other is maybe the greatest hooper of all time: LeBron James.