The ANNOTICO Report

Manu Ginobli is of Italian parentage and Argentine birth, and starred in
Italy's basketball league before coming to the US as an obscure No.57 draft
pick and vaulting to 2005 NBA All Star and No.1 in the hearts of so many.

TNT's Charles Barkley, a former basketball all time great himself, calls
Ginobli "my favorite player." Phoenix Coach Mike D'Antoni says Ginobili is
"one of the best players on the planet." Ginobili wows everyone. Scoop
Jackson wrote for ESPN.com  "Manu Ginobili quite possibly has just become
the most important basketball player in the world."

He is not only good in all aspects of the game: defense, assists, 3
pointers, driving the lane, fast breaks, field goal %, BUT he does it all
with such artistry and style against opponents much taller than him with
his leaping, hurtling, finger-rolling, dunking in traffic.

On the same San Antonio Spurs team with stars and highly regarded Tim
Duncan and Larry Parker, he is a standout, but still may be the most
unselfish spectacular player ever, content to throw the ball to Duncan all
night.

Who remembers that I "warned" you about Manu in my ANNOTICO Report on
February 21,2005.
"Manu Ginobli: Predictably Unpredictable, and an All Star in 3rd season
with Spurs- NY Times"
ITALIA MIA:
http://www.italiamia.com/cgi-bin/
yabb/YaBB.cgi?board=annotico;
action=display;num=1109058673
ITALY AT ST.LOUIS:  http://www.italystl.com/

He is a REAL treat to see in action, and if it wasn't for him, I wouldn't
be watching the NBA Finals.

GINOBLI'S HARD-CHARGING STYLE HAS MADE HIM THE NBA'S MOST TALKED ABOUT
RISING STAR AND BELOVED IN SAN ANTONIO

Los Angeles Times
By Mark Heisler
Times Staff Writer
June 14, 2005

DETROIT — Legends really are born in the NBA Finals, brief as these may be.

Four years ago, Emmanuel Ginobili was a 24-year-old Argentine guard playing
in Italy. Two months ago, he was a rising young player coming off his first
All-Star selection, although this season's 16-point scoring average was his
career best.

Now he's rising to yet another level no one imagined, not San Antonio
General Manager R.C. Buford, who found him, or Spur Coach and team
President Gregg Popovich, who drafted him, or Ginobili himself.

Ginobili is up to 22.3 points a game in the playoffs, carrying the Spurs
when Tim Duncan is hurt, as in the first round when the Denver Nuggets
upset them in the opener and Ginobili turned the series back around,
scoring 32 points in the pivotal Game 3 in Denver.

Ginobili is at 26.5 points a game in the Finals — while taking a total of
24 shots in two games. He's already a favorite of insiders who thrill to
his high-wire act, such as TNT's Charles Barkley, who calls him "my
favorite player." Now comes the fame.

Piston Coach Larry Brown says Ginobili is right there with Miami's Dwyane
Wade. Phoenix Coach Mike D'Antoni says Ginobili is "one of the best players
on the planet."

Who, me? says Ginobili.

"All of this attention feels very awkward," he said before Game 2. "Of
course I am enjoying it. I'm enjoying the whole experience of being in the
Finals again with a different role. But I'm not the kind of guy who's going
to say how good I am and those kind of things. I'm very low-key."

On the floor, he's as high-key as it gets, leaping, hurtling,
finger-rolling, dunking in traffic. In a league that's always holding its
breath, waiting for the next white star, he is the rarest kind, one with
"street cred."

Larry Bird, who was more skilled than athletic, had to prove himself every
day. In 1987, when he was an eight-time All-NBA first-team selection,
Detroit's Dennis Rodman said he was overrated because of his race; Piston
teammate Isiah Thomas agreed with him before saying he hadn't meant it.

Ginobili wows everyone. Scoop Jackson of teen-oriented Slam magazine was
blown away when he saw him in the 2002 world championships in Indianapolis,
before Ginobili had arrived in the NBA.

"Maybe it's too early to put this out there like this," Jackson wrote for
ESPN.com after Game 1, "but Manu Ginobili quite possibly has just become
the most important basketball player in the world, at least until the end
of this series."

If Diego Maradona had come from Iowa, it couldn't have been a bigger
mystery than Ginobili's arrival from soccer-mad Argentina. Ginobili's
father, though, was a basketball coach, two older brothers played for the
national team and Manu always knew what he wanted to do. He just didn't
know he'd be so good.

It's like Fernando Valenzuela, coming out of the Sonoran desert at 18 with
a beautiful flowing delivery as well as the ability to hit and field well
enough to win a Gold Glove and a Silver Bat.

There was only one Fernando. There's only one Manu.

No. 1 in Your Heart, No. 57 in the Draft

Then there's the matter of how the Spurs beat the world to his door.

In 1997, Buford, then an assistant coach with the Spurs, went to see an
Argentine point guard in a junior tournament but was more impressed by the
team's 20-year-old shooting guard.

With David Robinson, the Spurs were always drafting in the high 20s, long
after the top prospects were gone. Popovich, who was then the general
manager, had decided to go abroad, looking for young players they could
stash in Europe.

This wasn't new. The pioneer was Don Nelson, who was doing it in Golden
State in the '80s. Nelson even went to Africa once, hoping to bring back a
7-footer, but was disappointed to find you couldn't just walk down the
street and see one.

Nelson's son, Donnie, spent so much time overseas, he helped coach the
Lithuanian Olympic team in 1996. Also on Nelson's staff was Popovich.

So in 1999, the Spurs drafted Ginobili with the 57th pick, the
second-to-last selection in the second and last round. No one was too
excited about it, including Ginobili, who didn't even know they had scouted
him.

"I had no idea," Ginobili said. "I went online a couple of months before
the draft to see who was going to be picked and I was in none of them [mock
drafts].

"So I said, 'OK, I will be with the national team in Brazil and I will
forget about the draft.'

"Then I remember the team manager waking me up and telling me I was
drafted. I thought it was a mistake. I didn't hear anything. Nobody ever
contacted me. They just picked me."

That summer, Popovich saw him for the first time in the American qualifying
tournament in Puerto Rico and was glad they had done it.

"The first thing you saw was unbelievable competitiveness for a skinny
little thing," Popovich says. "Going to the hole and getting killed, not
caring, coming right back the next time down the court and pulling up and
shooting a three.

"You say, 'Wait a minute, there's ability attached to this
competitiveness.' He's a young kid and at 50-whatever we were, you're not
too excited anyway."

Ginobili, of Italian descent, was on his way to Italy to play
professionally with things to learn, like just about everything: making two
jump shots in a row, playing a little defense, not going behind his back
every time.

"He played no defense," Buford says. "I mean none. I'm thinking to myself,
'There is no way this guy can defend well enough to come to the NBA.' I
remember thinking back then that Hedo [Turkoglu] was a much more impressive
player."

When he joined the Spurs in the fall of 2002 after three seasons in Italy,
Ginobili still had things to learn. It was also clear he had star potential
too, if Popovich didn't kill him first.

Pop Goes the Rookie

Tony Parker, who had arrived from France the season before, at 19 to
Ginobili's 25 and playing a harder position, started from the beginning.

Ginobili's adjustment was slower and more difficult. The Spurs are
especially fond of telling about the time when, as a rookie, he tried what
the San Antonio Express-News' Johnny Ludden called a "630-degree
wrap-around pass." Wrote Ludden, "The ball, which Ginobili somehow nearly
brought around his waist twice, ended up in the lap of a courtside fan."

In one of the many talks they had that season, Popovich jumped all over
Ginobili in the dressing room afterward, asking why he did it.

"It's what I do," Ginobili said. "It's who I am."

It wasn't what Popovich did. An all-business, defense-oriented coach, he
thought Ginobili's job was to throw the ball to Duncan, shoot if he was
open and otherwise guard the ball with his life. Ginobili saw Popovich
upset a lot that season.

"First of all, you get worried," Ginobili says, "because there's a vein
here that just gets so big, you think it's going to explode."

Slowed by an ankle injury, Ginobili played behind Stephen Jackson as a
rookie, starting only five games, averaging 21 minutes and 7.6 points.

Ginobili calmed down enough to start half the Spurs' games last season. His
averages moved up only modestly, to 29 minutes and 12.8 points.

More was changing than Manu, however. Popovich, who had run a predictable,
get-it-to-Duncan offense, was going to a motion offense with the floor
spread.

Now his players were free to express themselves and there was nobody in the
league as expressive as Ginobili.

These days, when Ginobili throws the ball to a fan or, as he did in the
Phoenix series, to a wide-open Popovich, Popovich just grits his teeth.

"I actually thought that was to me, to keep me involved so I felt like I
was doing something in the game," Popovich said the next day.

"If it was a year and a half ago, I would have pulled a hamstring jumping
off the bench trying to get to him first to tell him about that play. I
think I just sat there with my chin in my hands, going, 'Oh well.'

"It's pretty obvious after a while that you've got to do that…. If you hold
him back, it's probably going to produce diminishing returns because his
game is kind of like [Steve] Nash plays, kind of like [Allen] Iverson
plays. They play at a high level of intensity, they like a little bit of
chaos….

"Timmy helped with that. Timmy would come over and tap me on the back,
like, 'You go sit over there, it'll be OK. We got this.' "

It's party time in San Antonio now, where fans sing the familiar soccer
chant: "Ma-Noo! Ma-Noo-Ma-Noo-Ma-Noo! Ma-Noooo, Ma-Noooo!"

Superstardom is out there waiting. Or not.

Ginobili was only the Spurs' No. 3 scorer this season, behind Duncan and
Parker. He may be the most unselfish spectacular player ever, content to
throw the ball to Duncan all night. In five of 18 playoff games this
spring, while he was breaking out, Ginobili didn't take even 10 shots.

"Well, he's probably not going to score more points than he's scoring,"
Popovich says. "It's a team game, and he's not going to be scoring 33 a
game or anything like that.

"I think what he's doing is fine. If he can do this for a whole career, he
would be a pretty special player."

He's already special and getting more special. The question from now on is,
how special?

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX)

Going up

Manu Ginobili's production has increased in the playoffs in each of his
three seasons with San Antonio:
(See Article)

http://www.latimes.com/sports/
basketball/nba/la-sp-spurs14jun14,1,
4260175.story?coll=la-headlines-
sports&ctrack=1&cset=true