SAN ANTONIO — Whatever was said to Manu Ginobili by Gregg Popovich must have been one hell of an inspirational speech. It was a Lazarus speech, because it brought Manu Ginobili back from the dead.
So what exactly was said in between Games 4 and 5 — a time when Ginobili was openly pondering retirement despite secretly knowing that he would be making his first start of the season.
What stuck in his head? What inspired him the most?
“That’s just family stuff,” Popovich said, dismissively.
The Spurs are a great story, and Popovich’s sitdown with Ginobili is a great story that will remain untold for the time being — though not forever. Nothing ever stays a secret forever.
But it must have been some speech, because it spurred Ginobili’s best game of the postseason and arguably his best game in more than a year as San Antonio took a 3-2 lead in the NBA Finals behind Ginobili’s 24 points and 10 assists — his first game in five years with numbers that high in both of those categories.
This was a night unlike every other night in these NBA Finals, which are impossible to predict from one game to the next. That is what is making them so riveting, because aside from the smooth stroke of Danny Green, who has made an NBA Finals record 26 3-pointers — there has not been one single constant from game to game.
Not one.
Well, there had been one — the fact that Ginobili was looking like a finished player, a guy at the end of his career who was playing like a shell of his former self. He hadn’t cracked double figures since Game 1. He was sixth on the team in scoring, shooting 19 percent from 3-point range and 34 percent overall.
He looked washed up.
Until Sunday night, when the “Manu” chants from the crowd at the AT&T center were deafening. No player is quite as beloved in this Hispanic-American majority city for quite the same reasons as Ginobili is. Yes, they love Tim Duncan, and Tony Parker, and David Robinson before them.
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But Manu speaks the language, and there is a bond between him and the local Hispanic populace that is distinct from any other member of the Spurs.
“He’s been here a long time, he’s helped us have a lot of success over the years, and one can imagine since he speaks the language of a lot of the people here it endears him even more. So when you put that all together, he’s a popular young man.”
That popularity is back at its pre-2013 levels after the show Ginobili put on after Popovich inserted him into a smaller starting lineup, replacing Tiago Splitter. The Miami Heat still pressured Tony Parker and Tim Duncan on the perimeter as usual, but that opened up the floor for Ginobili in a way he’s unaccustomed to, since he usually sheds his warmups just as Parker and Duncan are getting their first rest of the night.
And on the Spurs’ first possession — play that was designed for Parker — it was Ginobili who found himself for an open look with his foot on the 3-point line. He knocked the shot down, and he never slowed down thereafter.
“As I said before, I needed it. I was having a tough time scoring, and I needed to feel like the game was coming to me, and I was able to attack the rim, get to the basket and make a couple of shots,” Ginobili said. “So it felt good when I heard that. To feel that I helped the team get to that 20-point lead, it was a much needed moment in the series So I’m glad to see it happen.”
As a team, the Spurs shot 60 percent from the field and got 107 of their 114 points from their starters. Green was 6-for-10 on 3-pointers for 24 points, Tim Duncan shot 7-for-10 for 17 points and 10 rebounds, Tony Parker as 10-for-14 for 26 points and Kawhi Leonard shot 6-for-8 for 16.
As great as Miami’s Big Three was in Game 4 — maddeningly great, as mentioned in that post-game column, the Spurs were even greater in this game because they got it from now one, not two, not three, not four, but all five starters.
And the thing that had been hurting them, turnovers, finally did not haunt them for once. They had 19 miscues, but Miami scored only 20 points of those turnovers and missed a ton of shots near the rim.
A key sequence came after one of those turnovers, with LeBron James streaking to the rim for what looked like a sure-thing bucket. But Green came from behind to block the shot, and Parker raced to the other end for a fast-break floater. Instead of it being 71-69, the Spurs were ahead 73-67.
The “Manu” chant came after he dribbled right on Ray Allen, who was overplaying him to the left as every defender does. But Ginobili made a move ton his right, took off using the wrong foot and hit a five-footer with an and-one. It was one of those perplexing, preposterous, contortionist moves we have seen from Ginobili over the years, until this year.
After James missed a jumper, Ginobili sprinted coast to coast and converted, then assisted on a bucket by Tiago Splitter after the Spurs whipped five quick passes around the perimeter, and Ginobili then closed the quarter with a 6-foot driving bank shot for a 12-point lead that grew to 20 in the fourth.
“If we’re going to turn the ball over that much, we have to play as well as we did. We still have things we can clean up in that respect,” Duncan said. “We can’t expect to shoot that well in every game, but we just need one more.”
But that’ll need that one more on the road, in Miami, against a Heat team that has shown an uncanny bounce back ability over the past two postseasons. Game 2 was a bounce back game, and they crushed the Spurs. Game 4 was a bounce back game, and they looked like the greatest team ever assembled.
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