NEW ORLEANS – When Manu Ginóbili thinks about the chances of an Argentine boy growing up to win 4 NBA titles and an Olympic gold medal, he is amazed that this is the story of his sporting life.
“It’s one in tens of millions,” Ginobili said Saturday after an official announcement Saturday that he has now also been inducted into the Hall of Fame. “The possibilities are very, very narrow and it happened to me. I don’t know what happened, however, it’s me.
“I have the place to be part of two very iconic teams from those two decades of FIBA and the NBA. Incredibly lucky and lucky to be a part of those two.
Ginobili, five-time All-Star Tim Hardaway and decorated former coach George Karl were the NBA names in the elegance of the 2022 Basketball Hall of Famers announced in New Orleans at the NCAA Final Four site.
This year, former WNBA champion and two-time national college champion Swin Cash were also selected; Bob Huggins, longtime school coach, Lindsay Whalen, WNBA champion and two-time Olympic gold medalist; Marianne Stanley, NCAA National Championship coach and former WNBA Coach of the Year, and Hugh Evans, former NBA official.
Elegance will be inducted into the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame in Springfield, Massachusetts, on September 10.
Ginobili, a two-time All-Star, spent his entire 16-year NBA career with San Antonio, which is one of the main reasons he is now inducted into the Hall of Fame. He also credited his long time with an Argentine national team that is consistently among those in the world.
“I was part of two teams; if I wasn’t part of those two teams, I wouldn’t be here,” Ginobili said. “It’s not just about individual achievements. I never won a score, MVP or even the first team championship (All-NBA). I’m here because of my environment, the players I’ve played with, the coaches (through whom) I’ve been coached and the organizations. I know I’ve been very lucky. “
But Ginobili left his mark on the game in the way he used lateral movement after recovering his dribble to get shots in the paint. He is known as “Eurostep” because Ginobili had played for a Euroleague championship-winning team in Bologna, Italy, before joining the NBA.
“I never realized that I had created something or brought something new. I just played the way I thought possible,” Ginobili explained, referring to the challenge of looking to score against 7-foot player Shaquille O’Neal at the start. his career.
“I wasn’t going through To go through Shaq and nail, I had to overlook people,” Ginobili said. “That’s how my qualifications and physical talents to succeed in the hoop were discovered. I’ve been doing it for as long as I can remember.
Ginobili recalled that Steve Kerr attracted the motion more when he spoke of “how strange it looked. “
“It looked like a squirrel crossing the street to get to the edge,” Ginobili said, referring to his memory of Kerr’s description. “That’s when I started realizing that I was doing anything a little bit differently and other people started mentioning Eurostep. For me, it’s absolutely natural. “
Hardaway’s 15 seasons in the NBA from 1989 to 2003 with Golden State, Miami, Dallas, Denver and Indiana.
Karl played in the NBA for five seasons in San Antonio before coaching for 27 years, in which he won 1175 games, making him the sixth hit of all time. He was named NBA Coach of the Year in 2013.
Huggins has more than 900 NCAA wins in a school training career that began in 1977 and is lately in West Virginia.
Cash, who was once elected to the Women’s Basketball Hall of Fame, is most recently a member of the executive of the NBA’s New Orleans Pelicans. He won two NCAA national names with Connecticut and one WNBA name with Detroit. She also worked as an executive with the WNBA’s New York Liberty.
Whalen is a five-time WNBA All-Star and four-time champion. She is now the head coach of Minnesota, where she played in college.
Stanley, who is lately the WNBA’s head coach with Indiana, has spent forty-five years training, adding 22 years at collegiate point with Old Dominion, Pennsylvania, Southern California, Stanford and California. She is the WNBA’s Coach of the Year in 2022, when she was also elected to the Women’s Basketball Hall of Fame.