TMTTRIO
05-14-2005, 08:17 AM
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/sonics/2002274762_spurs14.html
Spurs' Ginobili hustling like crazy
By Greg Bishop
Seattle Times staff reporter
Manu Ginobili has thrived coming off the bench.
The Spurs are doing their best to convince Manu Ginobili that he's loco. They watch him weave through traffic like a New York City taxi driver, bouncing into bodies and collecting bumps and bruises, driving and diving and delighting in the collisions that result.
Ginobili is not normal. That much they can say with certainty.
He is a 6-foot-6, 205-pound can of Red Bull — instant energy, all the time. That's what makes the Spurs guard so effective, what fixates your eyes on him pinballing around the court, what places Ginobili in the company of the most stylish players in the NBA.
And also draws the ire of his coach.
It happens nearly every week. The Spurs are watching tape of recent games, listening to Gregg Popovich X and O, and there goes Mini Manu on the screen until it pauses.
"Are you crazy?" Popovich asks Ginobili.
The short answer is, well, yes.
"He's already convincing me," Ginobili says. :lol
It's hard to find a more exciting player in the NBA and harder still to find one that matches Ginobili's sense of style. If his game were a television show, it would be "Magnificent Eye for an Argentine Guy."
In that respect, Ginobili reminds veteran teammate Robert Horry of a young Clyde Drexler. Both prefer driving to dishing, and both do so with a style that doesn't detract from substance. Horry even says that Ginobili has nearly mastered Clyde the Glide's patented finger-roll.
"He'll try things because he don't mind getting hit," Horry says. "There are cracks that most people don't go through because they don't want to get hit or take the chance of getting kneed. He'll try it just for the hell of it. And he'll enjoy it."
That's why former Sonic Brent Barry bestowed Ginobili with the nickname "El Contusion." At once, his game contradicts itself: It's what the Spurs describe as reckless-but-controlled abandon.
Which isn't as surprising when you consider where Ginobili came from.
Ginobili was already a national hero in Argentina before he led his country to the Olympic gold medal last summer against the United States and Spurs teammate Tim Duncan. And Manu is to Argentina what Man-U (Manchester United) is to England — an object of national obsession.
He plays the way his countrymen do. With a flair for the dramatic. With toughness. With machismo. Without fear.
Sonics assistant coach Dean Demopoulos coached a good friend of Ginobili's, Pepe Sanchez, at Temple University. He sees similarities in two men who play basketball as if they represent their people.
"They're just tough," Demopoulos says. "They're physical. They play reckless, and they are fearless. Don't get me wrong, they're very cerebral also, very humble. You need that confidence. But you also need that balance that is so important in this game."
And so a country cheers Ginobili on, rising and falling with the fortunes of the only franchise in San Antonio. They join the Manu's Maniacs fan section at the SBC Center. They check his Web site — www.manuginobili.com — for daily updates.
Heck, when Popovich replaced Ginobili with Barry in the starting lineup seven playoff games ago, Barry joked that he was getting hate mail and noticed suspicious cars circling his house.
The switch morphed into the Spurs' most productive move this playoffs. It came after they dropped Game 1 against the Denver Nuggets in the first round. Six consecutive wins followed.
Bringing Ginobili off the bench allows the Spurs to manufacture offense when Duncan and Tony Parker are resting. It also allows Popovich to never rest his three best players at the same time.
Not many teams can bring an All-Star off the bench. But not many have a player like Ginobili, who makes a living adjusting on the fly and has averaged 21.3 points during the postseason, ranking him among the top scorers off the bench in NBA playoff history. :elephant
The Sonics saw the net effect in their Game 2 loss, when Ginobili entered in the middle of the first quarter and scored eight of the Spurs' next 10 points to balloon their lead to 18-8.
Twice he knocked down three-pointers against the Sonics' sagging defense, and when they extended, Ginobili went back to the usual driving and diving, pouring in a game-high 28 points.
"It makes you understand the game better because you have the opportunity to look at the game for the first five or six minutes," Ginobili says of starting on the bench. "If I can hit a couple shots early, the opponent guards me in a different way. After those three-pointers, they started to guard me closer, and so it was easier for me to go to the basket."
Sometimes, because of the ease with which Ginobili makes his frenetic pace so fashionable, the Spurs forget he's only in his third NBA season. And sometimes, because of how frenetic that pace can be, the Spurs are reminded of that fact.
Barry calls it "preparing for both the possible and the impossible when Manu gets the ball."
There are times when Ginobili's passes bounce off unsuspecting fingertips, times when he slips through a space no wider than a ruler between defenders, times when the whole lot of them wonder if Popovich may be on to something.
"Are you crazy?"
And yet they find themselves transfixed, struck, watching Ginobili weave around defenders until they bump into each other. The Spurs are perpetually on the lookout for those days when Barry says Ginobili does something none of them has ever seen before.
"We don't ever know what he does," Duncan says. "He just kind of puts his head down and goes. And we pray for the best."
Bruce Bowen made the NBA all-defensive first team this week, and after he good-naturedly says, "Manu don't want to see me," he can't come up with a strategy to defend his teammate. :lol
"How would I guard him?" Bowen asks. "I don't know. Because he plays so hard, that's the thing that makes him so difficult to guard. He plays hard constantly. He doesn't take time off."
That's about the only thing that should worry folks from Argentina to San Antonio this week. Ginobili hasn't taken time off in a long time. He came off the bench for the Spurs last season and helped lead them to the Western Conference finals. Then he brought the gold medal home last summer.
There's some thought that Ginobili may wear down by the end of the playoffs. For their part, the Spurs caution against that crazy talk because this is, after all, a crazy man we're talking about. (I just hope he can make it through this series alive the way he's been getting knocked around :depressed )
"That's the only way I know how to play," Ginobili says. "That's always been my game. I was never even taught how to do it or tried to do. Is that crazy? I don't know. That's just the way I play."
:elephant :elephant
Spurs' Ginobili hustling like crazy
By Greg Bishop
Seattle Times staff reporter
Manu Ginobili has thrived coming off the bench.
The Spurs are doing their best to convince Manu Ginobili that he's loco. They watch him weave through traffic like a New York City taxi driver, bouncing into bodies and collecting bumps and bruises, driving and diving and delighting in the collisions that result.
Ginobili is not normal. That much they can say with certainty.
He is a 6-foot-6, 205-pound can of Red Bull — instant energy, all the time. That's what makes the Spurs guard so effective, what fixates your eyes on him pinballing around the court, what places Ginobili in the company of the most stylish players in the NBA.
And also draws the ire of his coach.
It happens nearly every week. The Spurs are watching tape of recent games, listening to Gregg Popovich X and O, and there goes Mini Manu on the screen until it pauses.
"Are you crazy?" Popovich asks Ginobili.
The short answer is, well, yes.
"He's already convincing me," Ginobili says. :lol
It's hard to find a more exciting player in the NBA and harder still to find one that matches Ginobili's sense of style. If his game were a television show, it would be "Magnificent Eye for an Argentine Guy."
In that respect, Ginobili reminds veteran teammate Robert Horry of a young Clyde Drexler. Both prefer driving to dishing, and both do so with a style that doesn't detract from substance. Horry even says that Ginobili has nearly mastered Clyde the Glide's patented finger-roll.
"He'll try things because he don't mind getting hit," Horry says. "There are cracks that most people don't go through because they don't want to get hit or take the chance of getting kneed. He'll try it just for the hell of it. And he'll enjoy it."
That's why former Sonic Brent Barry bestowed Ginobili with the nickname "El Contusion." At once, his game contradicts itself: It's what the Spurs describe as reckless-but-controlled abandon.
Which isn't as surprising when you consider where Ginobili came from.
Ginobili was already a national hero in Argentina before he led his country to the Olympic gold medal last summer against the United States and Spurs teammate Tim Duncan. And Manu is to Argentina what Man-U (Manchester United) is to England — an object of national obsession.
He plays the way his countrymen do. With a flair for the dramatic. With toughness. With machismo. Without fear.
Sonics assistant coach Dean Demopoulos coached a good friend of Ginobili's, Pepe Sanchez, at Temple University. He sees similarities in two men who play basketball as if they represent their people.
"They're just tough," Demopoulos says. "They're physical. They play reckless, and they are fearless. Don't get me wrong, they're very cerebral also, very humble. You need that confidence. But you also need that balance that is so important in this game."
And so a country cheers Ginobili on, rising and falling with the fortunes of the only franchise in San Antonio. They join the Manu's Maniacs fan section at the SBC Center. They check his Web site — www.manuginobili.com — for daily updates.
Heck, when Popovich replaced Ginobili with Barry in the starting lineup seven playoff games ago, Barry joked that he was getting hate mail and noticed suspicious cars circling his house.
The switch morphed into the Spurs' most productive move this playoffs. It came after they dropped Game 1 against the Denver Nuggets in the first round. Six consecutive wins followed.
Bringing Ginobili off the bench allows the Spurs to manufacture offense when Duncan and Tony Parker are resting. It also allows Popovich to never rest his three best players at the same time.
Not many teams can bring an All-Star off the bench. But not many have a player like Ginobili, who makes a living adjusting on the fly and has averaged 21.3 points during the postseason, ranking him among the top scorers off the bench in NBA playoff history. :elephant
The Sonics saw the net effect in their Game 2 loss, when Ginobili entered in the middle of the first quarter and scored eight of the Spurs' next 10 points to balloon their lead to 18-8.
Twice he knocked down three-pointers against the Sonics' sagging defense, and when they extended, Ginobili went back to the usual driving and diving, pouring in a game-high 28 points.
"It makes you understand the game better because you have the opportunity to look at the game for the first five or six minutes," Ginobili says of starting on the bench. "If I can hit a couple shots early, the opponent guards me in a different way. After those three-pointers, they started to guard me closer, and so it was easier for me to go to the basket."
Sometimes, because of the ease with which Ginobili makes his frenetic pace so fashionable, the Spurs forget he's only in his third NBA season. And sometimes, because of how frenetic that pace can be, the Spurs are reminded of that fact.
Barry calls it "preparing for both the possible and the impossible when Manu gets the ball."
There are times when Ginobili's passes bounce off unsuspecting fingertips, times when he slips through a space no wider than a ruler between defenders, times when the whole lot of them wonder if Popovich may be on to something.
"Are you crazy?"
And yet they find themselves transfixed, struck, watching Ginobili weave around defenders until they bump into each other. The Spurs are perpetually on the lookout for those days when Barry says Ginobili does something none of them has ever seen before.
"We don't ever know what he does," Duncan says. "He just kind of puts his head down and goes. And we pray for the best."
Bruce Bowen made the NBA all-defensive first team this week, and after he good-naturedly says, "Manu don't want to see me," he can't come up with a strategy to defend his teammate. :lol
"How would I guard him?" Bowen asks. "I don't know. Because he plays so hard, that's the thing that makes him so difficult to guard. He plays hard constantly. He doesn't take time off."
That's about the only thing that should worry folks from Argentina to San Antonio this week. Ginobili hasn't taken time off in a long time. He came off the bench for the Spurs last season and helped lead them to the Western Conference finals. Then he brought the gold medal home last summer.
There's some thought that Ginobili may wear down by the end of the playoffs. For their part, the Spurs caution against that crazy talk because this is, after all, a crazy man we're talking about. (I just hope he can make it through this series alive the way he's been getting knocked around :depressed )
"That's the only way I know how to play," Ginobili says. "That's always been my game. I was never even taught how to do it or tried to do. Is that crazy? I don't know. That's just the way I play."
:elephant :elephant