From the day Popovich made him play five seconds toe-to-toe in an elevator: Ginobili’s frustrating encounters with Jordan

Today is a special day in the life of Manu Ginobili. The best Argentine basketball player in history turns 45 and in a few weeks he will be officially inducted into the Hall of Fame of discipline in the United States. That will be another iconic moment in a brilliant career that includes four NBA championship rings, an Olympic gold medal with the national team and several personal milestones that have made him a role model, on and off the court.

Currently, the Bahiense enjoys his life in San Antonio with the rest of his family. He is a special operations adviser to the Spurs and his task is to closely monitor the development of the franchise’s young players. In addition, he continues his financial investments in tech startups and enjoys long bike rides and playing tennis to keep the competitive spirit alive.

But if there is something that remained pending for Manu in his life, it was having a real encounter, as he would have wanted, with the man who marked his adolescence. Of course, we’re not talking about his dad or some of his siblings. The character that inspired him in the game was Michael Jordan. The same one who marked an era in the NBA dressed in the number 23 of the Chicago Bulls. The same one that penetrated the lives of the Ginóbili brothers when they turned on the TV in their home in Bahía Blanca and put play on the VCR to relive the dunks of Your Majesty.

The story goes that Ginobili was never able to fulfill his dream of playing against Jordan. As soon as the Argentine landed in the best basketball league on the planet, MJ spent his last months as a professional player. After his second retirement in 1998 after winning the second three-time championship with the Bulls, Michael returned to play for the Washington Wizards shortly after the US suffered the terrorist attack on the Twin Towers In New York.

Manu was a young man who was still earning the respect of Gregg Popovich y Tim Duncan when the first matchup of the season between Jordan’s team and the Spurs took place. That was on December 21, 2002, in a cross that was played in San Antonio and was a victory for the locals by 92-81. On that occasion, the Argentine was unable to take the field because he had been recovering from a sprained ankle, but 10 days later, Manu thought he was going to get revenge.

A few years ago, as a good admirer of new technologies, Ginóbili took advantage of his blog to describe exactly how he lived that day that for him was going to mean having the power to face his greatest idol at hand. The article titled “My confrontation with MJ” and used his memory when he was still an NBA player to express what happened on the last day of the year almost two decades ago

“In the same city where I am writing these lines, I played my only match against Michael Jordan, my childhood hero. I remember it was December 31st and that he was coming off a sprained ankle. Even that he had played briefly, maybe two or three minutes, the day before at Madison Square Garden. Back then, Pop wasn’t the Pop of today and didn’t give gamers a break at all. The chances of playing important minutes were slim, but not zero. I would have been happy with five or six good minutes where maybe I was going to be able to mark him or maybe he could defend me.. Who knows? ”, was the first part of the account of him.

After that, the Bahiense wrote that he thought he had played only seven seconds in that game and that he had not even shared the parquet with the winner of six NBA titles. In this context, Manu imagined himself with minutes in the second stage of the duel against the Wizards in San Antonio, but the coach had another idea in his mind.

“After the break I made sure I was ready for the rest of the game, I was flying during that warm up, I think I even did a windmill dunk once. Maybe by the end of the third quarter, he thought that, at least to give Bruce Bowen a break, he could play. No. It didn’t happen. The game was even in the fourth quarter and Pop never used me again. Game over. Defeat. Not MJ. No interesting story to tell. Very poor end of 2002 ″, wrote Ginóbili, before expressing that this was the first time he told the twins, Dante and Nicola, who the famous Jordan was.

“They told me that a friend at school mentioned to them that, a long time ago, there was a guy who was even better than Lebron James. So I told them who he was and showed them some memorable moments on YouTube. When I finished I asked them: ‘Did you know I once played against him?’. And I started to tell them this story as their eyes got bigger and bigger.”

Already retired, Manu once again remembered that critical moment at the beginning of his sports career. “Five seconds I played”, he confessed in a talk this year with the program Everything happens of Urbana Play. “I was on the same court, I received the ball and I threw a banana from half court and Jordan was on the other end. Pop didn’t put me on anymore. He never found out what he had done to me and for me it was a very serious offense. He needed me for five seconds and he didn’t give me more. The court is 28 meters, the closest I had it was to 16″, added MG in his dialogue about not meeting Jordan.

After his frustration at not being able to face his idol, Ginobili’s career continued on its way, while Her Majesty’s came to an end at the age of 39. In that case, the No. 20 from San Antonio will be able to tell his acquaintances that he reached 41 with a ball in his hands. But what he won’t be able to say is that he was able to have a deep face-to-face with Jordan even outside of him as a player.

When everyone thought that this anecdote had been the only one between the two Olympic champions, there was one more meeting that was another chapter of disagreements between two NBA icons. During one of the last seasons of their campaign, the Spurs traveled to the city of Charlotte to face the Hornets, the franchise that Jordan owns. Installed in the hotel waiting for the match, Ginobili touched the elevator button and, once the door opened, a figure almost 2 meters tall was inside the elevator.

“Once I was in the hotel before playing, the elevator opened for me and he was there. I stuttered and couldn’t bring myself to ask him anything. Then I ran into him a couple of times there on the pitch, but nothing more”, said Manu about that day.

Time passed and Ginobili, secluded in the intimacy of his basketball retirement, did not cross paths with Jordan again. He did do it with a character that they both respected and of whom on 23 he was practically his mentor, like Kobe Bryant. In the 2019 World Cup in China, the Argentine and the star of the Los Angeles Lakers shared a seat to see the enormous performance of the Argentine team led by Sergio Hernández and who reached the runner-up position.

Months after that meeting on the Asian continent, fate would have it Black Mamba He died along with one of his daughters and other crew members in the dramatic plane crash that ended with his star helicopter in California. The Memorial organized by the Los Angeles franchise at the Lakers stadium brought them together again, but each one took their rightful place on a day that saddened the world of sports.

“I had the life-size poster in my room, and I would talk to it at night. When my brothers left and I was alone in that room, at times I spoke to him. He was a mythical character more than real”, Ginobili said about his particular relationship with Jordan. For now, that long-awaited meeting has not yet occurred. For Manu, the image of the player that captivated him during his childhood remains almost the same, because he managed to share a handful of seconds on the court and also outside the box.

Perhaps, next September 9, while the Argentine is giving his speech as a new member of the Basketball Hall of Fame, the TV cameras will be able to capture his idol applauding that Argentine who, when he was still a boy, He had talks in his imagination with the sports icon that marked his life.

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