[Chauncey Billups] Manu Ginóbili deserved to get Finals MVP in 2005. I lost a lot of sleep because of him. He was just dominant. We prided ourselves on agitating and stopping people. We couldn’t do it with Manu. He was just that great of a player.
by vrkhfkb
12 Comments
Agreed, when offense was going stsgnsnt we’d give the ball to Manu and just let him work, broke us out of a lot of offensive slumps
Tim Duncan won it and also deserved it, but Manu was deserving as well. Manu always played more minutes in the playoffs and stepped up his production, but that was his best playoff performance.
In a defensive era when 20 ppg meant a lot, Manu score 20.8 ppg in the playoffs with a .652 true shooting percentage. Duncan scored 23.6 ppg, but was held to a .526 true shooting percentage.
Manu’s playoff stats are great. It’s just that the Spurs deliberately limited his minutes during the season. Manu played all out all the time, and they didn’t want him getting injured.
There’s a story about Manu diving into the seats during a practice. Popovich stopped play and told his players that’s the kind of all out effort they needed. Then he told Manu never to do that in a practice again!
I lost a lot of sleep because of that entire series.
In midst of reminiscing over the 2000’s, Manu’s career defining performance in the finals:
18.7/5.9/4.0 on 63.6 TS%
Absolutely took over the 4th in game 7. Parker and Duncan all deferred to him. Manu easily could’ve won FMVP over Duncan.
Manu is the GOAT 6th man imo. Dude was an *incredible* basketball player, and an integral piece of a dynasty.
Manu gets punished a lot in all time rankings for being willing to come off the bench, but he was safely a top 30 player during his prime from 05-11. It’s no mystery that the 2 times he was an All Star were the two years he actually started.
This is interesting and probably right. I remember watching the series and Manu seemed like the main offensive weapon for the Spurs
Now, if Ginobili receives the FMVP, that would have left Duncan with 2 MVPs and 2 FMVPs… would people still consider him a top 5 of all time? It’s an interesting thought because nothing in his career would have changed, just accolades
Timmy was the centerpiece, the FMVP award means nothing to me.
But if Timmy was our Shaq, Manu was our Kobe. Manu was amazing.
Definitely deserved it over Tim.
ctrl+f “Defense” 1 result
Yeah I’m sure the discussion here’s going to be high quality!
I was a big Pistons fan back then and can vividly remember hating how amazing Manu was. Freaking Eurostepping long haired foul baiting hoe.
Now I can look back and admire how incredible he was and how unique of a player he truly was.
Manu had a way better offensive series then Timmy yeah, but still, the Spurs won that series because of their defense, and while Manu was by no mean bad on defense, and while basically everyone but Parker was from solid to great on defense on that team, Tim was their defense