Original title: People’s History | From the double-play dream team to the NBA’s 1,000-game winning percentage, Wang Manu Ginobili’s road to the Hall of Fame
People’s History | From the double-play dream team to the NBA’s 1,000-game winning percentage, Wang Manu Ginobili’s road to the Hall of Fame
(The original article was published on September 6, and the author is NBA writer Kirk Goldsberry. The content of the article does not represent the translator’s point of view.)
Manu Ginobili’s journey to the Basketball Hall of Fame is widely regarded as one of the most unlikely experiences in sports history. As the No. 57 pick, he was the second-to-last pick in the 1999 NBA draft and didn’t make his NBA debut until three seasons later, when he was 25. During his 16-year NBA career—he stayed with the small-market San Antonio Spurs—in 1,057 games, more than 700 of them came off the bench.
Entry into the Hall of Fame, however, was so easy for Ginobili that it only required one round of voting. He is one of the most successful international players in the history of basketball. He won a Euroleague championship and four NBA championships, and led the Argentine men’s basketball team to a legendary Olympic gold medal in the summer of 2004.
However, his long-term impact on basketball goes far beyond those points. Before Ginobili was welcomed into that basketball temple this Saturday, we chatted with some of the people who witnessed his remarkable career. It helps us understand how his five major basketball honors combined to form one of the most memorable player résumés in recent years.
1. The first jade was born, and it broke the United States
The current Spurs CEO — RC Buford — had just been promoted from scout to head of scouting in the summer of 1997. One of the first things he needed to do following his promotion was to visit the U22 men’s basketball world championship in Australia – a tournament that had been held once before but had been suspended since 2005.
Earlier that summer, the Spurs selected Duncan with the No. 1 overall pick in the draft. The subsequent trip to Melbourne would change the basketball fortunes of San Antonio forever, even though Buford didn’t know it at the time.
While several NBA teams have sent scouts to the event, Buford saw the 20-year-old Ginobili play firsthand.
“He’s passionate and competitive,” Buford said in an interview regarding his first impressions of the future Hall of Famer (Manu Ginobili). “Argentina reached the semifinals, won The team’s best result to date.”
Gregg Popovich — the Spurs’ general manager at the time — also recalled his first impressions of the Argentine young talent. This impression is very similar to what Buford talked regarding.
“When I first saw him play, (I thought) he was probably the most fearless contender I’ve seen in a long time,” Popovich said. The way to break through is very different from everyone else on the court.”
Ginobili averaged 10.9 points and 1.5 assists for Argentina in that event and scored a team-high 20 points in a semifinal loss to Australia.
Two years later, Ginobili went to Italy to play professional basketball, helping Viola Reggio Calabria move from the second division to the first division. At the same time, the Spurs had just won their first championship in franchise history, and there was little need to keep their No. 29 pick in the first round. San Antonio wanted to preserve the entire championship roster, so it traded that pick to the Dallas Mavericks.
“We didn’t want to draft anyone who would force us to put him on the rotation,” Buford said.
In the end, the Spurs took a risk with a second-round pick — No. 57 — to draft Manu Ginobili. Their plan is to retain the right to play him in the NBA, but keep him in Italy for at least two more seasons.
While the Spurs waited patiently, Ginobili was emerging under Italian coach Ettore Messina.
“As time went on, he obviously had great success in Europe, winning titles with coach Messina,” Popovich said.
In Italy, Messina watched Ginobili’s meteoric rise to become the most dominant player in European basketball.
“We got him in a trade in 2000-01 and he was a starter right away,” Messina said. “By the end of the year, he was the MVP of the Euroleague final and the Italian league. We were invincible in all competitions. .”
Messina said Ginobili was an immature, rim-loving wing player early in his European basketball career. But when he came to Bologna, “he improved his jump shot, improved his ability to see open teammates when he broke through, and when he used the pick-and-roll, he was able to detect where the team’s best shooter was.”
“He’s starting to understand how important a round is in a high-tension game like the Euroleague final and the Italian league final.”
In 2002, the men’s basketball world championships were held in Indianapolis, and Ginobili’s performance attracted a lot of attention – he led Argentina to a shocking second-stage victory over the United States. It was the first loss for the U.S. men’s basketball team since it drafted an NBA player.
“We passed on hope to a lot of teams,” Ginobili said at the time. “The U.S. is no longer the best team in the world…I don’t think they’re going to be happy anymore.”
Ginobili and his teammates made it all the way to the final, where they lost to Serbia and Montenegro (note: still called Yugoslavia at the time) – a game in which Ginobili played only 12 minutes due to injury.
At this point, he’s still more than a month away from his NBA debut, but he’s clearly on the road to greatness. Once he joined the Spurs that fall, he moved into Popovich’s rotation, averaging 20.7 minutes per game as a rookie. This team is on the verge of bringing San Antonio its second championship trophy.
Ginobili has proven to be one of the best value players in NBA draft history. His journey from No. 57 to the ultimate winner has also forced NBA executives to rethink how they view foreign players and how they use their draft picks.
“If we had known he was that good, we would have taken him with the No. 29 pick in the first round,” Buford said with a smile.
2. The head of gold, the dream six is eclipsed
Two years following leading his team to a silver medal in Indianapolis, Ginobili took Argentina a step further at the 2004 Athens Olympics.
In the semifinals, Ginobili’s brilliance overshadowed the American men’s basketball team with Duncan, Iverson, James and Wade, scoring 29 points and leading Argentina to an 89-81 victory. He added six assists in the final as Argentina beat Italy 84-69 and won its first Olympic gold medal. Manu Ginobili averaged 19.3 points per game in this tournament — fourth among all players, behind only Hall of Famers Pau Gasol and Yao Ming, and New Zealand’s Phil Jones.
“There’s a group that has changed the way people around the world look at basketball, and he’s in that group,” Buford said.
Most Americans still see the Olympics as a humiliating failure, but others see it as proof of a way to beat Team America. Just twelve years following the Dream Team crushed opponents in Barcelona, Manu Ginobili and his Argentine teammates proved that basketball is no longer an American sport.
Manu Ginobili and other players of Argentina’s golden generation – including Luis Scola, Fabrizio Oberto and Pepe Sanchez – are not just helping out on that land that belongs to Maradona and Messi Promoted the game of basketball and propelled his national team to one of the greatest victories in basketball history.
Not many players can claim to be the best basketball player on his homeland’s continent, but Manu Ginobili is certainly the greatest South American basketball player. Oberto said Ginobili’s success has opened a door for many players from South America.
“He made the best ad for South American players,” Oberto said. “Manu showed the NBA what we might do, and it got a lot of us signed by NBA teams.”
Argentina in 2004 was the only team other than the United States to have won a men’s basketball gold medal since 1992, when NBA players were first allowed to compete in the Olympics.
3. European dance steps, step out of change
In 2018, following Manu Ginobili’s retirement, James sent a congratulatory tweet, one of which said: “The game of basketball should thank you for the coolest step ‘Eurostep’ today!!!”
Manu Ginobili didn’t invent the Eurostep, and he wasn’t even the first NBA player to use the Eurostep, but he made it famous—now the basic technique for superstars.
“He became a guy who changed the style of basketball,” Popovich said. “He did a lot of things that every American player started to imitate.”
Manu Ginobili is part of the reason why Eurostep has become popular in the NBA. The footwork was a combination of techniques that, early in Manu Ginobili’s NBA career, it was difficult for referees to judge whether it was legal or not. They often mistakenly called Manu Ginobili a walking violation in his rookie year.
The purpose of this step is to maximize the use of the two steps the breaker is allowed to take following the ball is combined — it’s close to the edge of a walk violation, but it’s not a violation. An offensive player using the Eurostep essentially makes two big hops; the first in one direction and the second in the other. Defenders often try to block the first hop, so the next hop in the opposite direction can either create a defensive space at the basket or create physical contact with a rambling defender, allowing the referee to Call a shooting foul.
“He wasn’t the first to bring the Eurostep into the league,” Buford said, “but he was the first to be proficient with the Eurostep. He used the technique to a level that people had never seen before. of.”
Sarunas Mathilionis – the great Lithuanian basketball player – is often credited with bringing the Eurostep to the NBA in the 1990s. But former Spurs player Brent Barry says Ginobili, who became a key member of the Spurs dynasty in the early 2000s, was the one who took the two-step technique of the Eurostep to new heights.
“I’ve played once morest Sarunas a number of times, he’s used that trick in the game, but he’s a much shorter power player,” Barry said. Beauty and elegant rhythm changes, and that’s what Manu added.”
Ginobili was an incredible athlete at 6 feet 6 inches (1.98 meters). When he drives to the rim, he uses his size and dribbling skills to force a left-hand drive before using his novel serpentine to get around the big man.
“Obviously he’s a southpaw that catches your eye,” Barry said. “And he has the kind of ability that Sarunas lacks. He can finish with a pick and a dunk. You can also spin the ball in the air and throw it into the rim.”
Manu Ginobili can score at the rim by slowing down and abruptly changing direction. But his Hall of Fame NBA career also coincided with a major change in professional basketball.
When he first arrived, the league was dominated by big men like Duncan, O’Neal and Yao Ming. They are exaggeratedly large and grab our attention in the low post. But by the time Ginobili retired, the league’s entire aesthetic had shifted to themes of rhythm and space. And those who can best embody this theme are skilled perimeter players like Curry, Harden and Doncic.
Ginobili’s Eurostep is both elegant and unpredictable, his ability to slow down suddenly is world-class, and his finishing at the rim is not only versatile but effective. As Barry puts it: “Once Manu is in the box, he has a million ways to beat the opposing center.”
Twenty years ago, no one might have predicted that Ginobili’s signature footsteps would turn the NBA upside down, but it did happen.
It’s been almost two decades since Manu Ginobili’s NBA debut, and his footsteps in the most crucial moments of the most important game of basketball have become an integral part of the modern NBA. Offensive wings like Manu Ginobili are now the type of stars everyone wants. Even the league’s most dominant interior scorer, Milwaukee’s Giannis Antetokounmpo — was a nine-year-old Athens boy when Ginobili won the biggest victory of his basketball career at the 2004 Olympics — —And rarely post up with a cover. He’s going to force his way through the lane, then hit the rim with some of the coolest steps in basketball right now for a layup or a dunk.
4. The Spurs’ core, the best strategy
The Spurs know how lucky they are. The duo of Duncan, Manu Ginobili and Parker is a luxury. Although Duncan would be considered the most talented of the trio, his taciturn demeanor gave Ginobili the opportunity to become the heart of the dynasty.
“He showed more emotion than Duncan,” Barry said. “He had the emotional content of the team flowing through him.”
During Manu Ginobili’s NBA career, the Spurs reached the conference finals seven times, winning five of them. And in those five Finals, they’ve won four more — on the biggest basketball stage, Ginobili averaged 14.0 points per game, even better than his career regular-season scoring average. But in addition to scoring, Ginobili also brought toughness to the team, allowing the Spurs to survive some of the toughest battles in professional basketball.
“You know those old-fashioned fire alarms that say ‘In an emergency, break the glass,'” Barry said. “For us, Manu is what’s hidden behind the glass. Manu is our situation. The guy to lean on in times of crisis. Thiem is great, but sometimes Manu is what we need.”
When the team needed to be carried, Ginobili had a way to do it, and the team paid him back. This was exemplified by the 2014 NBA Finals. San Antonio experienced a bitter defeat once morest the Miami Heat the previous season. In this regard, Manu Ginobili was particularly impressed. In Game 6 of the 2013 NBA Finals, he missed a free throw with 28 seconds left in regulation, leaving room for the Heat’s Jedi counterattack. And his error with 44 seconds left in overtime robbed the Spurs of their chance to overtake.
But those gloomy memories were all but wiped out by Game 5 of the 2014 Finals. The Spurs are at home in San Antonio with a 3-1 lead and two of the most dominant performances in NBA Finals history. Still, Miami took an early lead in Game 5 and clung to the score in the second quarter. At this point, Ginobili made a quick breakthrough and completed an epic poster-style dunk on Bosh’s head. This ball seems to have completely ended the possibility of Miami’s rise, and nailed another nail for the “Big Three Heat” era that has been buried.
This is neither the first time Ginobili has delivered his signature performance at a crucial moment, nor will it be the last. In the 2017 Western Conference semifinals, Manu Ginobili — who will turn 40 in two months — brilliantly blocked Harden’s tying 3-pointer from behind in overtime. The shot ensured the Spurs won Game 5 of the series.
For Barry, Ginobili’s ability to defy the big picture is one of his defining qualities: “He influenced a dressing room. He influenced a gym. He influenced a country.”
5. Thousands of games, the ultimate winner
Let’s illustrate this subtitle with a simple statistic: Of the 141 players in NBA history who have played at least 1,000 games, no one has a higher winning percentage than Manu Ginobili. Ginobili won 72.1% of the NBA games he played in.
Popovich said Ginobili’s ability to put team success ahead of individual honors is one of the reasons his winning percentage is so staggering.
“He’s a Hall of Famer who’s come off the bench for most of his career because I think if he does, we’ve got a better chance of winning games and championships. In that sense, he’s maybe someone I know The most selfless of the players.” Popovich said, “There are not many players who will make this sacrifice.”
Ginobili is one of only three players with a winning percentage over 70 percent by the “thousand-game” standard. The other two happened to be his teammates, Duncan and Parker.
This incredible statistic proves that the greatness of Ginobili and the Spurs is not only enduring, but believable.
He left the NBA with a ridiculously high win rate. That’s all the more remarkable considering he started his career as a second-round pick and made his NBA debut three years following draft night.
However, when the results of the NBA’s 75 biggest players were revealed, Ginobili wasn’t on the list — even though it actually included 76 people due to two equal votes.
Manu Ginobili’s résumé is comparable to that of many Big 75 players, although he hasn’t made as many All-Star appearances. By any measure, he’ll be the second- or third-best player on a four-time championship team. The Spurs were the totem of a team that had only one season of his career — his last — to win under 50.
In short, Ginobili’s basketball glory fulfilled every requirement for “greatness.” His four championship rings and winning percentage have said a lot. His signature footwork changed the NBA forever, as the rules allowed. He is one of the most important international players in league history. Yet, somehow, the league didn’t include him in the Big 75, choosing instead a few recent players who didn’t leave any of the aforementioned glory behind.
But to those who have been lucky enough to work with Ginobili, he is one of the greatest leaders and champions in basketball history, and he has one of the brightest basketball resumes anyone has ever seen.
“He’s amazing as a teammate, he’s amazing as a player,” Popovich commented. “He’s one of the friendliest, most curious people I’ve ever been around.”
Original: Kirk Goldsberry
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