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A mouse with wings!!! Priceless!!
Ginobili's swat steals the show
Jeff McDonald
Manu Ginobili's career has been marked by the big moment on the big stage.
He's played in Game 7s, and he's played for Olympic Gold.
Perhaps his greatest athletic achievement, however, came on an otherwise non-descript Saturday night at the AT&T Center, when with the game on the line and only one shot at salvaging it, Ginobili slapped a flying bat out of midair.
The airborne mammal had already interrupted play twice in the first quarter of the Spurs' 113-94 victory over Sacramento. There was no time to call pest control. Nobody else seemed willing to take action. So Ginobili played the Halloween role of Batman, and smacked the animal down with his bare left hand.
“I didn't think it was a big deal,” Ginobili said. “Then the whole arena started chanting my name.”
It was a scene straight out of Circus Maximus, with 16,966 calling for bat blood. Ginobili — perhaps against his own better judgment — whisked the animal up and handed it to a maintenance man for disposal.
Spurs coach Gregg Popovich promptly dispatched head athletic trainer Will Sevening with a bottle of hand sanitizer. On Popovich's preseason list of ways the season could go awry, “Ginobili contracts rabies from killing a bat,” likely didn't rank very high.
“He's never ceased to amaze me the years he's been here,” Popovich said. “He just did it again.”
Afterward, Ginobili didn't know that he'd actually killed the bat.
“It was just dizzy,” he said. “We took it safely to the locker room.”
The Kings soon suffered the same fate as the bat.
Behind an easy-does-it night from Tony Parker, and Richard Jefferson's best night with his new team, the Spurs ran away with the game in the second half.
Parker finished with 24 points and seven assists, while Jefferson pumped in a season-high 21 on 7-of-8 shooting. The Spurs led 61-45 at half, and the game was not in doubt again.
“We wanted to bounce back, obviously,” said Parker, who had eight points in Thursday's 92-85 loss at Chicago. “Chicago outplayed us, so we wanted to make sure we came out with a lot of energy.”
All that energy, however, nearly got vampire-sucked out of the building with 41 seconds left in the first quarter. The soon-to-be deceased bat had already impeded the game, once swooping in and nearly causing Kevin Martin to miss a breakaway layup.
Play stopped again after that, and something out of a bad Hollywood camping movie broke out. Referee Courtney Kirkland grabbed a towel to try to wrestle the bat. Another official asked, improbably, for a net. Sacramento coach Paul Westphal grabbed his clipboard.
Spurs rookie DeJuan Blair simply scurried away as if his hair was on fire.
Over on the Spurs bench, they knew what was about to happen.
“If that thing gets anywhere next to Manu,” one veteran Spurs player told the person next to him, “he's swatting it out of the air.”
Seconds later, before anyone else could blink, that's what happened.
“I guess in Argentina, bat hunting is part of everyday life,” Kings center Spencer Hawes said. “Somebody had to do it, and it wasn't going to be me.”
Ginobili seemed unfazed by the flying pest.
“It's just a mouse with wings,” he said.
With the bat disposed of, and Ginobili's future in extermination secure, play was able to resume. With one flick of his left wrist, Ginobili saved the day.
“The legend grows,” Popovich said.
A mouse with wings!!! Priceless!!
Hilarious.
Two days from now the outcome of the game will be irrelevant, but everyone will know what happened with the bat.
NBA.com box score tomorrow: SAS 1, BAT 0
Might they invent a new statistical category for incidental rodent exterminations?
What game?
PETA crying in 3...2...1...
You know it's a big deal when Blair's ungodly 10 rebounds don't even get mentioned. If it weren't for Manu's bat destruction (personally, I think the bat just flopped), we'd have at least three threads on Blair's inbounds-steal/dunk, and probably another one on how the length of his arms directly improves his PER and will win him ROY.
Meh..
I would have been impressed had he used chopsticks or gone Ozzy or Yao and proceeded to bite the head.
El gato blanco.
How can he be called anything else but BATMAN from here on??
Manu is humble.Meh..
I would have been impressed had he used chopsticks or gone Ozzy or Yao and proceeded to bite the head.
El gato blanco.
I was under the impression that Batman was pro bats..
Riddle me this, riddle me that..
Who's afraid of a little mouse with wings?
Dude has the reflexes of a cat and the speed of a mongoose.
Oh, and I hope Manu follows through on the prank Sean suggested.
There just better be some video when Manu shows up to practice foaming at the mouth.
Last edited by Blackjack; 11-01-2009 at 01:07 AM.
and after that in the next play he stole the ballI was under the impression that Batman was pro bats..
Riddle me this, riddle me that..
Who's afraid of a little mouse with wings?
Dude has the reflexes of a cat and the speed of a mongoose.
^ ^ Bumble Bee Tuna.
and he said he wasn't ready^ ^ Bumble Bee Tuna.
manuginobili
btw, I dont think I kill the poor thing. I felt it moving in my hand...1 minute ago from TweetDeck
By the way, did anyone notice this guy's reaction?
^ ^ It looks like he was shouting at Manu to me; kind of using his hands for the megaphone effect..
Upon a second glance, he might've been displaying the first stages of mypantness..
Manu. Effing awesome. That is all
Manu will lead the league this year in bpgs (bats per game).
The Joker couldn't have stopped Manu tonight.
You can't take that from him!
Love it.
Was looking up how they test for rabies and saw this:
.There are highly unusual cases of individuals contracting rabies by inhaling it from bat caves; but those cases are extreme and very rare
That's crazy.
I always thought Batman was cooler than Superman anyways.
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