The ANNOTICO Report

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

Manu Ginóbili began playing professionally in 1995 when he was 18, in
Argentina, of Italian ancestry,  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 title 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. "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."

Ginóbili, 27, was drafted six years ago with a shrug by the San Antonio
Spurs at No. 57, but did not join them for 3 more years, opting to play in
Europe, became an All-Star in his third season with the Spurs.

Messina said he could not have charted Ginóbili's sudden spurt of success.
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."

"With his controlled chaos, he changes the game for us," Duncan said. " 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".

New York Times
By Liz Robbins
February 20, 2005

DENVER - 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. title.

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
title 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.

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/02/20/
sports/20ginobili.html?pagewanted=1

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