Be Like Manu: Ginobili is Predictably Unpredictable

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Be Like Manu: Spurs' Ginóbili Is Predictably Unpredictable
By LIZ ROBBINS

Published: February 20, 2005


DENVER, Feb. 19 - Not even Manu knew.

He was like any other youngster, watching every N.B.A. All-Star Game on tape in the basketball-crazy city of Bahía Blanca, Argentina, staying out so late practicing that his father had to call him in to bed.

Emanuel Ginóbili, known as Manu, grew up wanting to conquer Europe. But the N.B.A.? He wanted to play with his friends for Argentina's national team. But the Olympics?

Michael Jordan's poster was taped to his bedroom wall, and his older brothers served as basketball tutors, but Ginóbili simply wanted to be like Manu, a mold he alone created and one now every young baller in Argentina wants to emulate.

Ginóbili, 27, who was drafted six years ago with a shrug by the San Antonio Spurs at No. 57, never thought he would become an All-Star in his third season.

But unpredictability is his trademark, and it became his ticket to the All-Star celebration here. "Now that I'm part of it, it's unbelievable," said Ginóbili, a 6-foot-6 shooting guard.

Over the last four years, Ginóbili has spun the globe the way he has defenders - with frantic flair and espresso-fueled passion for the game.

Along the way, he has won everywhere and everything, starting with the Euroleague championship in 2001 with Virtus Kinder Bologna in Italy. In his 2002-3 rookie season with the Spurs, Ginóbili won an N.B.A. le.

Last summer, Ginóbili took home a gold medal from the Athens Olympics, validating his talent and confirming that the United States is no longer the pre-eminent international power.

"Sometimes I think of the places I have played and it's incredible," Ginóbili said on a bus Wednesday night as the Spurs entered the All-Star Game break with the best record (41-12) in the league.

"I'm still playing and I started 6,000 miles from here," he said. "I wasn't sure at all. My biggest goal was to win a championship in Europe. Every time I won something, I felt like I was in heaven."

Asked if he could have imagined his success last season, Ginóbili laughed and said, "It was an impossible dream."

R. C. Buford, the Spurs' general manager, spoke of Ginóbili's potential a bit differently when he called the decision to draft him in the second round a "wild guess."

But finding unheralded stars from emerging basketball lands has become the Spurs' trademark as they use their extensive international scouting.

"I think they got lucky to get me," said Ginóbili, who is averaging 15.9 points, 4 assists and 4.5 rebounds a game this season. "When I was 22 I was not yet a good player, and they let me develop."

Buford said: "We didn't see him any place that other teams weren't. We got fortunate that a lot of things came together to allow us to get his rights. The biggest credit is to Manu because he's the one who built his abilities and unconventional game."

Ginóbili (pronounced jin-OH-bili) began playing professionally in 1995 when he was 18, then moved to Italy in 1999 to play in Reggio Calabria. Two years later, he moved to a better team, in Bologna, and won the Euroleague le that season.

"Every time he faced a higher step, the first time he might just be O.K., but he would learn," Ettore Messina, his coach in Bologna, said Friday in a telephone interview. "His first Euroleague game in Athens, he scored 1 point. Six months later, we won the championship and he was the M.V.P. of the series."

But Messina said he could not have charted Ginóbili's sudden spurt of success. "I was sure he was going to be a pretty great N.B.A. player, but I was not expecting him to do it that quickly," Messina said.

But that is Ginóbili's nature, to turn the improbable into reality.

"Manu has incredible control of his body in the air," Messina said. "He's like a snake sometimes, he can bend, move and do the strangest things. He's not afraid of contact."

Kobe Bryant and Charles Barkley call Ginóbili their favorite player for his contortionist moves. His teammate Tim Duncan marveled at how Ginóbili had infused the Spurs with new energy.

"With his controlled chaos, he changes the game for us," Duncan said. "I think we've played with such a structure for so many years, to add an aspect like that, it helps us tremendously."

Ask Spurs Coach Gregg Popovich and he will shake his head at Ginóbili's maddening style. "You have to let Manu be Manu," Popovich said.

They have come to a tacit agreement after three years of film sessions. Instead of going for every steal on an inbounds pass or on a full-court press, Ginóbili might do that three times a week.

"One of Manu's real strengths is his unpredictability," Popovich said, "and if I try to pigeonhole and take that away, I think it would affect all parts of his game. Whether it's making a steal an unorthodox way, going to the offensive boards when he shouldn't, taking a 3 when I'm jumping off my seat, I've decided that I just let him play."

Last summer, Ginóbili signed a six-year, $52 million deal to stay a Spur despite being courted by other teams. But in Argentina, it was one of the richest contracts ever signed by an athlete, which became an instant cause for celebration and alarm.

"Right now he is by far the most popular athlete in Argentina, that there isn't anyone else on his level, whether it be a 'footballista' or anyone else that compares to him," his father, Jorge, said matter-of-factly through an interpreter Thursday in a telephone interview.

Jorge, Ginóbili's former coach and president of the Bahiense del Norte basketball club, knows painfully about fame. After Ginóbili signed his contract, the police informed him that kidnapping threats were made against his father. Ginóbili installed a security system and had guards around the clock outside the family's home, where they have lived for 34 years.

"There was a time there we felt uneasy," Jorge Ginóbili said. "The economic situation here is a fundamental problem. When the people see how much they he signs a contract for, it creates that animosity."

Manu Ginóbili said that, for now, he had been able to reduce the security. "There's a risk," he said. "There's not a day goes by when I'm not worried."

Ginóbili continues to be accessible, even if at a safe distance, to his fans. He runs his own Web site and is continually on the Internet, responding to e-mail messages.

"The flair and the fearlessness that he lives on the court, he is almost the polar opposite as an individual," Buford said. "He's a very quiet, very secure man, and anybody would be lucky to be his friend.

Back in Argentina, Ginóbili and his wife, Marianela, have donated money to two orphanages and basketball schools.

"He's still the same person when he was a child, we are really satisfied with how he has handled it all," Jorge said. "Manu is just Manu. He always wanted things better for himself."

He is never satisfied. After he led Argentina's upset of the United States team in the semifinals of the 2002 world championships in Indianapolis, he sprained his ankle in the semifinal game against Serbia and Montenegro and sat dejectedly with all of his teammates in a restaurant.

"Because of the team effort, the way we played in Indy, the way we lost it, it was really helpful for us to grow up," Ginóbili said. "That experience taught us that we were not going to make the mistake when it happened again."

Ginóbili is the linchpin to a Spurs team favored to win another championship. Together with Tony Parker of France; Duncan, of the United States Virgin Islands; and Rasho Nesterovic and Beno Udrih of Slovenia, Ginóbili represents the new movement in the league, which has 79 international players on 30 teams.

"The foreign players used to be all big men or small forwards, Nowitzki, Stojakovic; of course, there was Drazen Petrovic," Ginóbili said. "We are the first of the guards, me and Tony. Now we are the new image.

"Years ago, the feeling was with foreign players, he's got skills but he can't play D. That's not true anymore."

The Spurs drafted another Argentine, Luis Scola, a power forward playing in Spain. Ginóbili said Scola was ready to play in the N.B.A now.
"If you want the best league in the world, you need the best players in the world," Ginóbili said.

This weekend, he has finally realized he is one of them





all I can say is I'm glad the Spurs picked Manu up. He may not be the best player but he is a winner and he'll do anything to win.

[cqsallie]

[url]all I can say is I'm glad the Spurs picked Manu up. He may not be the best player but he is a winner and he'll do anything to win.

And all I can say is that I agree with you. Manu is more than a little crazy on the court; he tries things nobody else would dare to try; sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't. And isn't that absolutely refreshing? The fact that Manu Ginobilli dares to be different and try for the impossible shot has, IMHO, given the Spurs a leg up. What if all the Spurs were as unpredictable to the defense? What a total hoot!!!!
Do I think he's the best Spur? Not really! Just the best damned herky-jerky, feet going one way/body going the other fake out expert; drive to the post without fear expert; throw caution to the wind expert - Yeah!
The Big Fundamental, Ground-hog Day #21 does the same thing effortlessly, without all the razzle-dazzle, but a game without Manu is like a day without sunshine - okay, but not really swell.
Here's to you, Manu, who makes things swell...

[Mark in Austin]

that is Ginóbili's nature, to turn the improbable into reality.

Truth.

That is the best definition of Manu I have ever seen.