After 16 years with the San Antonio Spurs, Manu Ginobili has ended his career. Not only do Texans lose the most popular player in their franchise history – basketball also loses one of its great unique pieces. An appreciation.
Almost every story repeats itself at some point. Player types come and go, moves are copied and throwing movements, sometimes even gestures and facial expressions, are passed from one generation to the next. Although it may seem absurd, many star careers are already looking for new versions of these stars. The next MJ, the next Dirk, the next LeBron, whatever.
Nobody has to bother to look for the next Manu Ginobili. Although elements of his game – especially the Euro-Step – are currently being played by many NBA players and the current MVP is also a left-handed shooting guard with James Harden, who has not only copied a move from the man with the once swaying mane. However, the game Ginobilis as a whole cannot be replicated.
It was too wild, too unpredictable, too unique. And that applies even more to his career. Manu relinquishes as a legend of his own category. And not only because no other NBA player has ever taken a bat flying through the hall out of the air by hand.
Ginobili joined the NBA at a time when foreign players were not by far as “normal” as they are today, especially guards and especially those who played as unconventionally as him. Spurs coach Gregg Popovich often almost swallowed his tie at the beginning of the collaboration when Ginobili once again broke out of a system and unpacked his own wild creation instead.
It wasn’t until time that the coach learned that the unpredictable could be an ideal counterpart to Tim Duncan’s stoic brilliance. Ginobili wriggled through defensive lines like Houdini and saw angles that would have been hidden to almost any other player. He made the Spurs worth seeing when they still had the reputation to bore their opponents to death only with defense and bank shots.
Genius and madness were often close together. Ginobilis career experienced extreme highs, but also extreme lows – probably no sequence illustrated this better than in game 7 of the Conference Semi-Finals 2006 against the Mavericks, when he first met a three-pointer to lead, only in return to commit one of the most unnecessary fouls in history to Dirk Nowitzki and make his legendary three-point game possible in the first place. That was Manu too.
However, there is no doubt that the genius prevailed over the course of his career. Before Manu made his NBA debut in 2002, he had already won the EuroLeague as final MVP, just like the FIBA AmeriCup and silver at the 2002 World Cup in Indianapolis. Among other things, he won the 2004 Olympic gold medal with the golden Argentine generation in 2004 – with his international summary alone, Ginobili would be a guaranteed hall-of-famer.
Of course, this also applies to the NBA career. Ginobili does not have the classic portfolio of an NBA star – he was only All-Star twice each and twice in the All-NBA Third Team, his career average of 13.3 points is good, not outstanding. However, his work, his value goes far beyond the numbers. That is why Ginobili enjoys the maximum respect among all its fellow players and opponents.
His biggest statistical victim was perhaps the best coaching decision Popovich ever made. By taking Ginobili away from the bank for most of his career, he scored less, but the Spurs still had an elite scorer and playmaker up their sleeve who could change the momentum of every game.
Ginobili accepted this, especially as the somewhat reduced playing time should have made his long career possible to some extent. He probably didn’t like the role as Sixth Man – when Pop joked at the presentation of Ginobilis Sixth Man of the Year-Award 2008 that he would like to stuff the trophy up his ass, made it look deep.
But Ginobili recognized the value for his team and swallowed his own pride. All-star appearances and individual awards went through, but no one should doubt how large his share of the four NBA titles San Antonio could win with him was. In 2005, for example, there were good arguments for him as a final MVP.
Statistically, this makes Ginobili harder to grasp according to traditional measures, but some advanced metrics at least indicate its true value. Since 1996 plus/minus has been collected, during this time only Duncan, LeBron and Nowitzki have a higher positive value than Ginobili. However, Manu has only played about 60 percent of the minutes of these three legends. Its net rating of +9.8 is higher than any of them.
Especially the offensive deposit metrics are big fans of Ginobili, because he already played in the early 2000s with a modern choice of throws (threesomes, baskets, free throws) and always belonged to the more effective scorers on the piano. He was not only an international pioneer, but also a playful pioneer in the league.
The fact that he still had his mistakes made him approachable and even more popular in San Antonio than, for example, the “perfect” Duncan, especially since Ginobili was considered one of them as a Latin American in a city with a very large Mexican share. The fans suffered with him when he played a decisive role in the Spurs’ defeat in the 2013 finals in Match 6, losing eight balls.
They were angry, but they forgave him because none of them were more shaken by this final defeat than he was. And they cheered all the more as Ginobili delivered a driving dunk about Chris Bosh one year later for THE Signature Play of the successful revenge. Ginobili was almost 37 years old at the time, but it seemed that he and the Spurs could go on forever.
In fact, Ginobili played for another four years. Duncan stopped two years ago, Parker moved to Charlotte this summer, Kawhi Leonard, who was to take over the torch, has pushed his trade with the Raptors himself. Suddenly Popovich is all of a sudden there, after the player who perhaps gave him the most gray hair has left him.
For the Spurs this marks the end of an era, for the NBA too, so to speak. After game 5 of the series against the Warriors, their coach Steve Kerr, who once played with Ginobili, hugged him and almost begged him to continue playing. “Go on, okay? Why not? If you still love it, go on!”
With his game intelligence, Ginobili could probably have played quite effectively at 45. Now he’s decided against it. For one of the unique pieces of basketball the next stop will be the Hall of Fame, as Dirk Nowitzki already pointed out. One Euro-Step after the next.