Manu Ginobili inducted into the Basketball Hall of Fame: 'I'm not here because I was special' / News - Basketnews.com

During his Naismith Hall of Fame speech, Manu Ginobili referred to Gregg Popovich, his Spurs teammates, but also to his humble beginnings in Argentina.

Credit: Wendell Cruz-USA TODAY Sports Credit Wendell Cruz-USA TODAY Sports

"I’m not here because I was super special. I'm here because I was part of two of the most important teams of the 2000s."

Tim Hardaway Sr.

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Manu Ginobili's Hall-of-Fame enshrinement speech was invested with a lot of emotion, as one of basketball's greatest winners received the biggest accolade.

In the ceremony that took place in Springfield, Massachusetts, Ginobili, 45, was presented by Tim Duncan, already a Hall of Famer himself. Next year, Tony Parker, the third member of San Antonio's legendary Big 3 will be eligible for selection.

"The Spurs were one big, strong, supportive family for me," Ginobili said.

Spurs coach Gregg Popovich, the NBA's all-time wins leader doesn't want to be considered until his career is over. Ginobili reserved special tribute for him.

"Pop, what can I say? You've been so, so important for me and my family, on and off the court, that'll I never be able to thank you enough," Ginobili said, his voice cracking.

"One of the best players to ever play the game... One of the best teammates," Manu said about Duncan.

"I'm happy to have shared a team with Pop, Tony Parker, David Robinson, Tim Duncan. They and many others contributed to my development in my career," said the Argentinean retired player, dressed in black, and in front of an audience eager to hear his impressions.

"I also want to talk about teams that weren't as successful and that took steps to get here," described Ginobili to start talking about Bahiense del Norte, the family club in which he grew up when he started playing football (soccer), an activity he picked up very early.

"I started a block from home, in Bahiense del Norte. My dad Jorge was the president and when he wasn't at work he was at the club. My mom (Raquel) was a coach. My brothers (Sebastian and Leandro) also practiced there," he said.

"I was training 6-7 hours a day. He dribbled and perfected my shot. That's how I developed my love for the game, too," added the guard of the Argentine team that won the gold medal at the 2004 Athens Olympics.

Also participating as guests at the ceremony were his former teammates, Pepe Sanchez, Luis Scola, Andres Nocioni and Fabricio Oberto, with whom he won the NBA championship ring with the Spurs in the 2006-2007 edition.

After turning pro as a teenager and playing in Italy with Kinder Bologna until 2002, Ginobili credited "sheer luck" for bringing him to the Spurs, who selected him with the 57th pick of the 1999 draft without interviewing him or giving him advance notice. The two-time all-star spent the next 16 seasons in San Antonio, winning titles in 2003, 2005, 2007 and 2014.

"We had our priorities straight," he said. "We never let our egos get in the way. We knew when it was [Parker’s] time, when it was my time and when it was [Duncan’s] time, which was most of the time."

His number 20 jersey, the one he always wore throughout his stint with the Texan franchise, was retired at the AT&T Center in San Antonio in March 2019.

In the team that coach Gregg Popovich is still directing, the legendary shooting guard converted 1,495 three-point shots and 1,392 steals. In both categories, Ginobili is the franchise leader.

The left-handed former player from Bahia Blanca was accompanied by his wife (Marianela Orono) and their three children (Luca, Dante and Nicola) in this event that included the awarding of 12 other figures from the NBA/WNBA universe.

Among them were Tim Hardaway (former Golden State Warriors and Miami Heat point guard) and coaches George Karl (Seattle Supersonics, Denver Nuggets and Milwaukee Bucks), Bob Huggins (West Virginia) and Del Harris, 85, who's coached 1,013 NBA games.

Tim Hardaway, 56 and a five-time NBA all-star, joined his fellow 'Run TMC' partners Mitch Richmond and Chris Mullin, as well as former Golden State Warriors coach Don Nelson, in the Hall. The former point guard joked that Nelson had "lied to every team" during the 1989 pre-draft process by telling them "that my knees were short" in hopes that Hardaway would fall to the Warriors.

"Man, we were ahead of our time," Hardaway told Richmond and Mullin, who joined him onstage. "I cherish those years."

Born and raised in Chicago, Hardaway singled out Isiah Thomas as a childhood hero and thanked his mother, Gwendalyn, for taking time off work to show him the proper bus routes to school and for steering the family after her divorce. Hardaway also shared a moment with his son, Tim Jr., a shooting guard for the Dallas Mavericks.

"You have kept the basketball legacy alive and well," Hardaway said. "I introduced you to the game we love, and we’re so proud of you. We have so much joy watching you play. You be out there hooping your butt off."

While Hardaway didn’t directly address the controversy surrounding homophobic comments he made during a 2007 radio interview, he thanked Hall Chairman Jerry Colangelo and NBA Commissioners Adam Silver and David Stern for being "men who never wavered in their belief in me even when it wasn’t always popular."

For Harris, his was a professor encouraging him to take a year to coach a junior-high basketball team before joining the seminary.

Harris was going to be a pastor; ironically, basketball’s founder, Dr. James Naismith, also was a pastor. Instead, Harris followed in another set of Naismith’s footsteps, as a coach.

"After that year, I knew what I wanted to do with my life," said Harris, who coached at just about every imaginable level - high school, college, the NBA, international teams and at the FIBA level.

You can read the interview Del Harris did with BasketNews last summer here and here. The Hall-of-Fame inductee talks about his career, including his tenure with Team USA, Shaquille O'Neal, Kobe Bryant, Dirk Nowitzki, Luka Doncic and Giannis Antetokounmpo.

His path to the Hall came from modest beginnings, just like Huggins, who now coaches at his alma mater, West Virginia, and has won more than 900 games in his collegiate career, and Karl, who got emotional when he paid tribute to his college coach at North Carolina, Dean Smith, and got laughs when talking about the challenge of coaching a Hall of Famer like Gary Payton.

"This is really incredible for a guy from Penn Hills, Pennsylvania," Karl said. "This is a ‘wow' moment for me."

Huggins even did a little coaching as he paid tribute during his speech to Jerry Colangelo, the chairman of the Naismith Memorial Hall of Fame.

"You’re allowed to clap, I think," Huggins said. "I'm not real sure of the rules, but what the hell, let’s just make them as we go."

The night opened with a tribute to Boston Celtics legend Bill Russell, who had been inducted as both a player and a coach before his death in July. Jerry West and Alonzo Mourning introduced a video montage to Russell's on-court heroics and off-court activism as the likes of Charles Barkley and Dikembe Mutombo looked on from the crowd.

"Bill was the ultimate competitor on the court and a remarkable human being off of it," West said. "And in his own way, he made all the lives he touched a little better. That's why he'll be missed, especially by those who were fortunate enough to know him."

Also honored were seven more new Hall members, all deceased: one of NBA’s first Black referees in Hugh Evans, six-time All-Star Lou Hudson, former Milwaukee Bucks coach Larry Costello, international great Radivoj Korac and a trio of former Harlem Globetrotters in Wyatt “Sonny” Boswell, Inman Jackson and Albert “Runt” Pullins.

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