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What a wonderful piece
Last edited by SpursFan86; 08-11-2016 at 04:49 PM.
What a wonderful piece
This is great, great work from Lowe and the tidbits he got out of Bowen, Duncan, Pop, Buford, Brown, and others are things that I didn't know before.
I'll say this about Manu: some Spurs "fans" choose to bash Manu for his public failures (often ignoring his very high profile successes), but the way that his teammates and friends rally around him in those moments where he takes complete responsibility for his own failures is basically all you need to know about how he's viewed by those who know him best.
Manu is a force of nature. It's been a real pleasure to watch him for the last decade and a half -- successes and failures -- and to get to see, up close, a legendary compe or and incredible teammate who can be those things while simply being himself.
"People always ask me who was hardest to guard," Raja Bell said. "I say Kobe. That is what people want to hear. But the truth is, it might have been Manu."
Nice compliment from a good defensive player.
Beautiful, beautiful, beautiful piece.
I love Manu. So much.The Spurs are not sure they could have recovered from the devastation of the 2013 Finals against Miami-- and Ginobili's unraveling in Game 6 before Ray Allen's famous shot -- had they not built such deep trust and love. Ginobili committed eight turnovers and was a team-worst minus-21 in the aborted clincher. He is still grappling with that night, especially since it came after his strongest postseason performance in Game 5.
"My head failed me for the first time," he said this spring. "I relaxed after Game 5. I felt self-satisfaction. It made me weak. It had never happened. My head was always the thing that drove me."
Mills sat two stalls from Ginobili after the game, and found him sobbing, head buried in his hands. The whole team and their families went to Il Gabbiano in Miami that night for dinner; Splitter, Duncan, Parker and Ginobili sat at the same table as Popovich approached every member of the dinner party with words of encouragement.
Nobody at Ginobili's table spoke. "They brought the food, and nobody even cared," Splitter said. "We just looked down. We couldn't even look at each other face-to-face. We just wanted to be close to each other."
After another close loss in Game 7, Duncan found Ginobili. "I had to grab him by the head, tell him, 'It's OK. We're going to be OK.'"
Three weeks later, Prigioni met Ginobili in Argentina and congratulated him for playing in the Finals again in his late 30s. Ginobili could not accept the good wishes. He didn't talk to most of his Argentine teammates about the 2013 Finals for months, until he sent several of them an email explaining what had happened and assuring them he would recover.
Great article. Thanks for the link.With Timmy gone, Manu moves to the front as my favorite active player. Glad he and TD didn't go out at the same time, tbh. It would be tough to take.
Damn..great stuff... Lowe with the pre-farewell essay on Ginobili
Both to Manu and Lowe for this piece. Lots of great insight and quotes in there.
Great piece. I just recommended it to everyone today.
Tim was the rock. Manu is the heart.
The coaching staff felt Ginobili, bathed in the Golden Generation's selfless spirit, might accept the bench role more readily than Parker.
The only debate was whether the move would be fair to a player so accomplished. Popovich asked Ginobili privately in January. "I don't think I've ever admitted this, even to my staff, but if Manu decided he was not good with it, he was gonna start. Whatever he said, we would do it. He deserved that," Popovich said.
Ginobili nodded his agreement, and left the meeting. Word filtered to the other players. "I was blown away," Duncan said. "Are you kidding? He's Manu! He's a star! He can't not start."
Awesome article on Gino. It really is astonishing how good he and Parker have become as international players. Ginobili and Parker had the pedigree to be solid athletes, but they wound up being international stars and HOF players. They are both the greatest guards to ever come from Europe and South America, respectively.
I love Manu even with failures and all. The guy just plays with a passion, determination and recklessness that has been rarely seen. I always wished he could have come to the United States at even earlier age, then his impact would have been even greater.
the intangibles Manu brings to the team are really invaluable..going to miss that when the end comes..even newcomers, hardly possessed with compe ive fire like Aldridge, mentioned how contagious his energy around the court and and that's the reason he is the sPUR player he enjoyed most playing with ..
One of the best ever written articles about Manu. Woj has a couple great ones so does Harvey. With that being said, a centerpiece story is not part of this article which was when Pop went to pick Manu up at the airport late at night on his return from Beijing after re injuring his ankle and playing the Olympics against the Spurs recommendations. That kind of father like at ude by Pop cemented forever their relationship and the importance of Manu for the franchise
Zach wrote few times he was a "Manu fanboy" and you could tell a splendid will come out when he gets to write the definitive article on him...
http://grantland.com/the-triangle/we...ers-in-game-5/I’m an unabashed Manu Ginobili fanboy, so you can guess how thrilling it was to hear the crowd break out repeated “Man-u! Man-u!” chants after they realized sometime in the third or fourth quarter that he was having a historically great bounceback game.
Such a great piece. I never thought I would ever read a Manu related piece with so much inside-info/stories that I didn't know.
My favourite part:
That's what life is all about.the United Nations group spent one snowy evening on the roof of a parking garage in Denver, watching shooting stars, Mills said.
There was no reason to stain such a great thread/article with the re ed Manu v Tony thing.
Yep....
Yeah it's unfortunate but not at all surprising.
Amazing article. Love this team
Brilliant article. If only Manu could get a realistic chance at another ring in his last season...but Durant and the Warriors had to ruin the spirit of compe ion and everything for the rest of the league.
this may be the best Manu article that I have read.
Wonderful tribute piece with some stories about Manu I hadn't seen before. No Spur fan should miss this article.
"Nothing we didn't already know." -- spurstalk
A few of my favorite basketball/Manu/Argentina related articles.
These one will enter that list for sure.
http://downtownball.net/2014/08/lega...band-brothers/
http://bballbreakdown.com/2016/08/09...en-generation/
http://www.sbnation.com/nba/2014/9/8...fiba-world-cup
Most of those state the fact that Ginobili and Argentina did something no one can never do again, and that´s affect the way things were done by USA Basketball.
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