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Manu Ginobili has retired from the NBA after 16 incredible seasons with the San Antonio Spurs. While Ginobili flirted with retirement for years, it didn’t seem the day would ever actually come. And even as his career reached it’s final stage, he had fleeting moments of success making it still beautiful watching him play.
Why do we love watching Ginobili? Some of it is nostalgia, of course. He’s 40 years old and has amassed a large number of accolades and highlight reels, so half of the joy of watching him now is recollecting those glory days. It’s not that the Ginobili of today lives in the shadow of his former self. He is more of an afterimage that we use to access the emotions that the younger Ginobili made us feel.
Because of that, whenever Ginobili did something great in his final season — an incisive pass, a Euro-step, a game-changing block — it generated this excitement that there’s still some magic left in him. We celebrate him as a means to preserve a person that’s given so much to the game and his fans. We don’t want him to be forgotten.
That excitement is underlined by an anxiety that the magic was about to run out. All things must end, after all, and after the Spurs’ Game 5 elimination to the Warriors, that end is here.
Steve Kerr hugged Ginobili and asked him to continue playing. During the embrace, Kerr brought up Roger Federer’s desire to prolong his career. As Ginobili walked away, Kerr shouted that Ginobili reminded him of Federer.
The Federer comparison is understandable, but not really apt. The two of them are less gifted athletically than most of their counterparts and use their brain to bridge the distance, but Federer is a master of technique, angles, time, and space. When he plays, it feels like he’s leading his opponents through an enactment of their preordained defeat, rather than actually playing and struggling against them. Federer is more precognizant than cunning.
Ginobili, on the other hand, more closely resembles a magician. He’s a 6’6 balding guy, which makes him an outlier in general society, but not when he’s standing next to his standard muscle-bound opponents. When he drives to the rim against those giants, he looks even more ridiculous. He doesn’t appear exceptionally gifted physically, so his dunks always have an air of disbelief in them.
Iniesta and Ginobili are the trickster gods of their respective sports.
In the last Thor movie, there was a scene where Loki was tied up as Thor, Bruce Banner, and Valkyrie discussed what to do with him. During their discussion, Thor told a funny story of how Loki once transformed into a snake when they were young because he knew Thor liked snakes. When Thor went to play with the snake, Loki became himself again and stabbed Thor.
Everyone in that group was more physically imposing than Loki, but he was so dangerous because his power, like all the other trickster gods in lore, came from deception. Whether was changing his shape, faking his death, or pretending to be hurt to distract some guards, he was feared by those superficially more powerful. He misleads them, which opens the path to get what he wants.
Loki’s weapons are his bag of tricks, and Ginobili is the same way. Rather than speed, explosion and power, he’s wowed us with a collection of ball-fakes, head-fakes, misdirections, no-look passes, Euro-steps, body contortions under the rim, and much more. Like all good trickster gods, he beats his opponents by confusing them and making them look silly.
Even as a 40-year-old playing a young man’s sport, Ginobili mixed up the tricks so much that he never got predictable. Everyone knows that he loved to Euro-step, but since his entire playing style has a natural air of uncertainty for defenders, they still fell for it when he unleashed that signature move. If they decided they’ll look out for that move and that move only, he pulled out another trick to get his points.
There are times when he got the ball and half-heartedly faked like he was going to take off, as if it’s an automatic movement for him. Sometimes the defender took a step back, and sometimes they didn’t fall for it. But it always froze them and made them anxious, which gave Ginobili time and space to do whatever he wants.
He did it midway through the second quarter of Game 5 while being guarded by the much larger Kevin Durant. Ginobili got the ball and took a jab step that pushed Durant back a bit. Durant then crept toward him, unsure of how close he should get. Ginobili stood almost motionless, holding the ball with both hands. Then, he suddenly he fired a bullet pass over Durant’s head to Rudy Gay for an easy layup. Durant turned around and watched Gay lay the ball up like someone who was coming out of a trance.
That was always the fun of Ginobili, even and especially at his advanced age. His infinite tricks immobilize defenders and buy him space and time. The uncertainty and excitement of his trickster ways mean we watched him not knowing what to expect. His ability to make something out of nothing, to spin gold out of straw, remained unparalleled until his retirement.
There are many words for it: cunning, deceit, guile, craftiness, ruse, skill, etc. When Ginobili was at his best, and even in fleeting moments, he was so delightful that there was really only one word for his style: magic.
