The Highlights that Reveal the Magic of Manu Ginobili

Manu Ginobili announced his retirement from professional basketball on Monday. The San Antonio Spurs legend was a four-time NBA Champion, scoring 14,043 regular season points, dishing out 4,001 assists, and netting 1,392 steals. Manu was a two-time All-NBA player, a four-time All-Star, the all-time Spurs leader in steals, third in assists, second in boards, and the team’s fourth leading scorer.

Impressive totals by pretty much any rational consideration but it should be noted that he did all this after coming to the league at the age of 25, after a European career that put him on the EuroLeague’s list of 50 Greatest Contributors. Not to mention spending much of his NBA career coming off the bench. Oh, also, he won a Gold Medal in the 2004 Olympics, an accomplishment he shares with fewer than 50 other non-Americans in the history of the sport. He was the greatest South American basketball player who ever lived and one of the surest-thing Hall of Famers of his generation.

But, as amazing as this shit is, the cold stats do very little to really describe Ginobili the basketball player because watching Manu was like watching magic. An oversized shooting guard with a full complement of skills—passing, boarding, scoring inside and outside. If you needed a perimeter player to do it, he could make it happen. His skill set—which maybe came along a decade too early, a stunning consideration when you look at the breadth of his accomplishments—was the harbinger for the style of basketball that would come to dominate the NBA while he was still playing in it.

He was also just a totally enthralling athlete to watch, one of the most entertaining and infuriating players of his era, a dude who complemented his size and athleticism with breathtaking skill and off-kilter train of thought that mystified the staunchest of defenders.

Manu’s mega-power, the adamantium claws that complemented his healing factor, was his touch around the rim. Watch him dive into big men on drives and flip up shots over and over again, and see the dumbfounded looks on their faces. Watch them notice the guard driving, take the foul for the greater good, and force him to the line to get the game into a half-court situation, only to see those hopes utterly dashed and tossed aside when Manu manages to use THEIR body to contort himself midair. He places his hands low and away from their arms—positioned specifically to keep the shot from hitting rim—then creates an arc out of his hands that defies logic, flipping the ball nice and high while putting an extraordinary amount of spin on it, so it hits the backboard and gently drops in.

Kwame Brown can’t even fucking believe it, he just lands and stands there, wondering what the hell he is supposed to do, exactly, the futility of his entire career getting replayed in two or three seconds. Shaq tries to act not mad, looking left and right and dropping the ball, but c’mon, we know, dude. Brad Miller slumps his shoulders and drifts away while Manu, hair and all, pumps his fist and heads to the line. Manu manages to create perfect answers to unsolvable problems, with the sound of one hand clapping perfectly and eloquently.

Manu was tricky as hell. Watch him fool Kevin Garnett, possibly the best on-switch big-man defender in NBA history, with a perfectly executed ball fake at the rim. Manu acts like he is going to flip it in around Garnett, spinning the ball in off the backboard behind Garnett’s back, a basically impossible move that you still have to fear when you’re defending him. Garnett, a spatial genius, bites HARD and tries to reorient to block that shot. Manu, in retort, takes the slim second of time he’s created for himself, reorients, and lifts up for a totally normal-ass layup over Garnett, who, amazing in his own way, finds himself swiping at it. Everything happens so quickly that Garnett has absolutely no idea what has happened to him on that one. His arms shrug, he gestures toward the ball, as if to say, that CLEARLY wasn’t my fault? Someone else fucked up SOMETHING there, right?

And hey: that trickster spirit didn’t make Manu universally beloved. There was a person, here and there, who MIGHT HAVE SAID that, ON OCCASION, Manu might have indulged in a flop every now and then. Now, I am not here to say, for sure, if they were right. They were, of course, but I’m not here to say that. What I AM here to say is that, not only did it NOT MATTER if they were right, but that flopping is, fundamentally, an attempt to fool referees, who are SportsCops, and that fooling cops is cool. What was the man supposed to do!? Deny his truth, which was constructing elaborate lies to gain slivers of advantage? It would have been a crime worse than murder, to not follow his heart in this way.

Manu’s career might have happened a little early. His immediate successor, the fabulous fellow-lefty James Harden, has built himself a year-after-year All-NBA career and netted an MVP award replicating a lot of Manu’s skills and tendencies and trickster spirit, going so far as to openly credit Manu as an influence. Above, we see their greatest on-court moment together, the two of them lightly colliding and flopping off the other. Manu gets the upper hand, as per his senior status.

But anyone who tells you that’s all there was to the dude is full of shit. Here he is trying to get a flop off Ray Allen, managing to not travel in the process, reading the situation and realizing it didn’t work, and picking up his dribble again and trying to create a pick-and-roll basket with Tim Duncan. Manu is correct, here, he has a perfect read, but no one else manages to pick up on what the hell he is trying. If he had a flaw, it was that he simply was always thinking several steps ahead of everyone else, trying and seeing shit that wouldn’t even occur to a normal person and trying to put it into practice at the expense of his teammates understanding. But when it worked, it was spectacular.

Manu’s signature move was a handsome 1-2 Step, or a “EuroStep,” as he came to make it known. A basketball player on a drive is allowed a big step toward the rim. For most of history, NBA players would inevitably take these steps charging forward, to create maximum momentum at the rim. Manu, clever as he was, rejiggered this approach to deny himself the extra momentum while giving himself a different angle at the rim, stepping around his defender and hitting the rim instead of through him.

It’s a signature move that worked for him year after year, but also, in the process, came to exist as a synecdoche for his whole game. While everyone else looked to go through, Manu’s head was up and looking for a way to get around. It made him a true original and one of the greatest players of his generation.