Top 100 NBA Players: #60 - Manu Ginobili

Manu Ginobili

Teams

San Antonio Spurs - 2002-18

Playoffs

Appearances - 15 (2003,2004,2005,2006,2007,2008,2010,2011,2012,2013,2014,2015,2016,2017,2018)

Conference Finals - 8 (2003,2005,2007,2008,2012,2013,2014,2017)

NBA Finals - 5 (2003,2005,2007,2013,2014)

Championships - 4 (2003,2005,2007,2014)

Awards and Honors

All-NBA Third Team - 2 (2008,2011)

Sixth Man of the Year - 1 (2008)

All-Time Ranks

Three-Pointers Made - #39

Total Steals - #61

League Leads

none

Manu Ginobili's path to the NBA was different from almost any other on this list. He had played 3 years of professional basketball in Argentina and one in Italy before entering the NBA Draft, where he was drafted by the Spurs with the second-to-last pick in the 1999 Draft. Rather than joining the team immediately, he played 3 more years in Italy, where he earned 2 MVP awards and a Finals MVP.

When he finally joined the Spurs in 2002, he was already 25 years old. As a rookie he was a minor contributor, putting up only 7.6 points per game, but his role increased a bit in the playoffs, and he was able to help the Spurs win a title in his first season.

His role and level of play both increased over the next couple of years, and he was a full-time starter in his third season, when he averaged 16 points in the regular season, which increased to 20.8 in the playoffs, and he was runner-up to Tim Duncan in the Finals MVP voting after earning his second NBA championship.

He was slowed by foot and ankle injuries the next year, and the Spurs were eliminated in the second round, but both Ginobili and the Spurs bounced back the next year. Manu was moved to the bench midway through the season to provide a spark, and it worked perfectly, and the Spurs plowed through the playoffs on their way to their 3rd title in 5 years, with Ginobili still playing a major role.

The next year was possibly his best individual season, with averaged of 19.5 points, 4.8 rebounds, and 4.5 assists, mostly as a backup, and he was rewarded after the season with the Sixth Man of the Year award and a spot on the All-NBA Third Team. Just like in the seasons after their previous 2 championships, the Spurs again failed to repeat, falling in the Conference Finals to the Lakers.

Ginobili was injured for most of the next season, including the playoffs, and it was the only time in his career in which he didn't participate in the playoffs, though his team did make it. He came back healthy in his bench role the next year, then was elevated back into the starting lineup in 2010-11, and he responded by posting his second-best scoring average with 17.4, and made his second All-NBA Third Team. He also averaged over 20 points per game in that season's playoffs despite playing through an injury, but the team lost in the first round.

He returned to his bench role for the rest of his career, starting only 10 games in his final 7 seasons, but he was able to help the Spurs reach the NBA Finals 2 more times, winning a 4th title in 2014, with Ginobili again raising his play in the playoffs. He played 4 more seasons with the team, finally retiring in 2018 when he was 40 years old.

Ginobili was never regarded as a superstar during his career, but he played a very important role on a Spurs team that was always a title contender while he was there. He always played his best ball in big moments, whether it was the playoffs or the Olympics, where he won the Gold Medal with Argentina in 2004, and he is the only player in this countdown to win Gold for a country other than the US. Add it all together, and you have one of the greatest players of all time.

Top 100 NBA Players: #56 - Tony Parker

Tony Parker

You might assume that Tony Parker made this list because of his Finals MVP, but that's not actually the case. Parker may have been awarded that trophy, but that doesn't change the fact that Tim Duncan was still the best player on the 2007 Spurs championship team. Here are their numbers during that season's playoff run:

Parker - 20.8 pts, 3.4 reb, 5.8 ast, .480 FG%, .679 FT%
Duncan - 22.2 pts, 11.5 reb, 3.3 ast, .521 FG%, .644 FT%

Their scoring averages and shooting percentages are reasonably close, but there is a much bigger gap between their rebounding numbers than there is between their assist numbers. It was Parker's best playoff run to date, but he still wasn't on the level of Tim Duncan.

It is much more appropriate to compare him to Ginobili. Each has been a member of 4 championship teams in San Antonio. Neither has been the best player on a title team, but they are always among the top contributors to the Spurs' deep playoff runs.. Parker played an average of 72 games per season in his career, while Manu has averaged only 66. Here are how their other career stats stack up.

Parker - 16.6 pts, 2.9 reb, 5.9 ast, 0.9 stl, .494 FG%, .327 3P%, .753 FT%
Ginobili - 14.0 pts, 3.7 reb, 4.0 ast, 1.4 stl, .450 FG%, .369 3P%, .827 FT%

Once again, it is hard to say from these numbers which one was a better player. Parker had the better overall shooting percentage, but Manu was better from longer distances. Parker is a better scorer, and Manu is a better defender. The biggest difference is that Parker has been able to remain healthier than Ginobili as a whole. 

Parker is one of the few players on this list who is here almost exclusively for his playoff performances. He's not the best passer for a point guard, but he's a pretty good scorer. He's a decent rebounder, but he doesn't really have anything that sets him apart from any other guard in the regular season. What earned him this spot is that he always picked it up in the playoffs, with his scoring average rising by 1.6 per game and 5 appearances in the NBA Finals and another conference final.

Top 100 NBA Players: #72 - Manu Ginobili

Manu Ginobili

If you have any doubts about whether my rankings include any personal bias, today's entry wipes away those doubts. Including one of my least favorite players of all time in my all-time top 100 is difficult, but I must stay true to the statistics, and the numbers don't lie. Can you name every 6th Man Award Winner who has at least 2 All-Star appearances and 3 championships? There are only two: Kevin McHale and Ginobili.

Manu has always kicked his game up a notch in the playoffs. In 2005, for example, he was the #2 player on the World Champion Spurs, and his stats from the postseason are much more impressive than those from the regular season. Take a look:

Regular Season - 16.0 pts, 4.4 reb, 3.9 ast, .471 FG%, .376 3P%, .803 FT%
Playoffs - 20.8 pts, 5.8 reb, 4.2 ast, .507 FG%, .438 3P%, .795 FT%

That was the most impressive point of his career so far, but he was also the third best player on the 2007 Spurs and the 4th best player on the 2003 Spurs, also both NBA champs. At age 36, he was once again the 4th best player on a championship team, 11 years after earning his first. 

Overall, he has played in 5 NBA Finals, winning 4 times, and has been an important player each time. He had 12 straight seasons of averaging at least 10 points per game, and has never missed the playoffs in his career, even though he has never been the star player on the Spurs at any point in his career. Playing alongside Tim Duncan has obviously provided a boost to Manu's standing here, but Manu also may have had something to do with Duncan's overall greatness.

Top 100 NBA Players: #86

Chris Bosh

(BBR: #106)

Bosh may seem like an unlikely candidate to make this list, especially ahead of contemporaries Ginobili and Parker, who have a much better track record at winning, but even though many were disappointed with his performance during his first season in Miami, it actually wasn't that bad, and the last five years he spent in Toronto were very good. Take a look:

2005-2010 - 22.8 pts, 9.9 reb, 2.5 ast, .500 FG%, .811 FT%

Those would be pretty good averages for a single season, but those were the numbers he posted over the course of five seasons on average. Only 3 men have ever matched those numbers in a single season, and all 3 are players whose all-time ranking hasn't been revealed yet: Bob Lanier, Kevin McHale, and Larry Bird. It's pretty rare to find a big man who can also score and make his free throws, but that's what Bosh brings to the table.

During his first season in Miami, all of those numbers dropped off slightly, most notably his scoring, which was 4 points lower than the average above. Many would say that it was a bad career move for him, but when you look at the bigger picture, he enjoyed more success in one year than in the rest of his career combined, reaching the NBA Finals with the Heat, which was much better than his previous best, which was losing in the first round.

While he was in Toronto, he was the best player on the Raptors for years, but they realized that they couldn't win a title with him as their best player, so he moved to Miami to become a third option, and he adjusted pretty well. In fact, I'm not sure how long it's been since a team's third-best player averaged over 18 points per game.

While Parker has definitely enjoyed much more playoff success than Chris Bosh, there's no denying that Bosh has always been the better player overall, even with the playoffs added in, as they are above. Add to that the fact that Bosh is just hitting his peak in the 8th year of his career, and you may be seeing him make a much bigger move in years to come.

Top 100 NBA Players: #87

Tony Parker

(BBR: #367)

Tony Parker enters the list just two spots ahead of his teammate Manu Ginobili, and you may assume that his Finals MVP trophy was the difference between the two, but you'd be wrong. Parker may have been awarded that trophy, but that doesn't change the fact that Tim Duncan was still the best player on the 2007 Spurs championship team. Here are their numbers during that season's playoff run:

Parker - 20.8 pts, 3.4 reb, 5.8 ast, .480 FG%, .679 FT%
Duncan - 22.2 pts, 11.5 reb, 3.3 ast, .521 FG%, .644 FT%

Their scoring averages and shooting percentages are reasonably close, but there is a much bigger gap between their rebounding numbers than there is between their assist numbers. It was Parker's best playoff run to date, but he still wasn't on the level of Tim Duncan.

It is much more appropriate to compare him to Ginobili. Each has been a member of 3 championship teams in San Antonio. Manu was the 4th, 2nd, and 3rd-best player on those teams, while Parker was the 3rd, 3rd, and 2nd-best on those teams. Parker played an average of 74.6 games per season in his career, while Manu has averaged only 70.3. Here are how their other career stats stack up.

Parker - 16.7 pts, 3.1 reb, 5.7 ast, 1.0 stl, .493 FG%, .315 3P%, .732 FT%
Ginobili - 15.3 pts, 4.0 reb, 3.9 ast, 1.5 stl, .449 FG%, .371 3P%, .834 FT%

Once again, it is hard to say from these numbers which one was a better player. Parker had the better overall shooting percentage, but Manu was better from longer distances. Parker is a slightly better scorer, and Manu is a better defender. The biggest difference is that Parker has been able to remain healthier than Ginobili as a whole, which can be seen on the chart below. (Parker is in blue, Ginobili is in green.)

I've also included Jerry Lucas on this chart, since he was sandwiched between them on this all-time ranking. Contributing to 3 title teams as a top-3 player while remaining healthy for the majority of his career gave him an edge over Lucas, who was never a top-5 player on a championship team. Lucas' stats looked more impressive, but Parker knew what it took to help his team win, which is why he has passed Lucas in the all-time listing of stars.

Top 100 NBA Players: #88

Jerry Lucas

(Simmons: #64, BBR: #82)

Jerry Lucas was a statistical giant during his prime, twice recording seasons in which he averaged at least 20 points and 20 rebounds a game. Today, it's a huge headline when a player does it once. But the problem with Lucas is that he was almost always a good player on a bad team, or a bad player on a good team.

Lucas was very well-known during his career for racing down the court at the end of the quarter to grab the rebound when a player heaved it up from beyond halfcourt, which enabled him to pad his rebounding stats in a way that did not benefit his team in any way. While some of his stats were amazing, you have to wonder how much of that was focused on himself.

His two best seasons, 1965-66 and 1967-68, both came very early in his career, but his team was not very successful in either. In 1966 they were eliminated in the first round of the playoffs, and in 1968 they didn't even reach the playoffs. Even with the lack of team success, his stats in those two seasons were definitely notable.

1966 - 21.5 pts, 21.1 reb, 2.7 ast, .453 FG%, .787 FT%
1968 - 21.5 pts, 19.0 reb, 3.1 ast, .519 FG%, .778 FT%

No player since 1969 has averaged 21 points and 19 rebounds per game, so those numbers may have been partly a result of the style of play back then, but there's no doubt he was a talented player. He toiled away on bad teams in Cincinnati during his prime years, and finally made his way to New York late in his career, where he made the only two Finals appearances of his career.

In 1972, he was the second-best player, behind only Walt Frazier, on the Finals runner-up Knicks, when he averaged 18.6 points, 10.8 rebounds, and 5.3 assists in 46.1 minutes per game, but the following season, when the Knicks broke through and won the title, he was no longer a star, averaging only 7.5 points and 5.0 rebounds per game in the playoffs.

From this chart, it seems obvious that Lucas was a better player than Manu Ginobili (and that they had eerily similar career trajectories), but the reason that the two are ranked so close together in the overall rankings comes solely from their playoff successes. Lucas was only a major playoff player once in his career, while Ginobili has made a splash in the playoffs four different times, three of which were championship seasons. For Lucas, it always seemed to be more about himself rather than his team, and that is why he's only #88 in the all-time rankings.

Top 100 NBA Players: #89

Manu Ginobili

(BBR: #73)

If you have any doubts about whether my rankings include any personal bias, today's entry wipes away those doubts. Including one of my least favorite players of all time in my all-time top 100 is difficult, but I must stay true to the statistics, and the numbers don't lie. Can you name every 6th Man Award Winner who has at least 2 All-Star appearances and 3 championships? There are only two: Kevin McHale and Ginobili.

Manu has always kicked his game up a notch in the playoffs. In 2005, for example, he was the #2 player on the World Champion Spurs, and his stats from the postseason are much more impressive than those from the regular season. Take a look:

Regular Season - 16.0 pts, 4.4 reb, 3.9 ast, .471 FG%, .376 3P%, .803 FT%
Playoffs - 20.8 pts, 5.8 reb, 4.2 ast, .507 FG%, .438 3P%, .795 FT%

That was the most impressive point of his career so far, but he was also the third best player on the 2007 Spurs and the 4th best player on the 2003 Spurs, also both NBA champs.

Manu and Bill Sharman were both among the best players on multiple championship teams, but neither was ever the best player on his team. Manu has been in the top 5% of players in the NBA multiple times, just as Sharman was in his career. Sharman's overall numbers may appear to be more impressive than Ginobili's, but Manu plays in an era with increased competition and a greater number of talented players overall.