SPUR OF THE MOMENT

Legends really are born in the NBA Finals, brief as these may be.

Four years ago, Emmanuel Ginobili was a 24-year-old Argentine guard playing in Italy. Two months ago, he was a rising young player coming off his first All-Star selection, although this season’s 16-point scoring average was his career best.

Now he’s rising to yet another level no one imagined, not San Antonio General Manager R.C. Buford, who found him, or Spur Coach and team President Gregg Popovich, who drafted him, or Ginobili himself.

Ginobili is up to 22.3 points a game in the playoffs, carrying the Spurs when Tim Duncan is hurt, as in the first round when the Denver Nuggets upset them in the opener and Ginobili turned the series back around, scoring 32 points in the pivotal Game 3 in Denver.

Ginobili is at 26.5 points a game in the Finals -- while taking a total of 24 shots in two games. He’s already a favorite of insiders who thrill to his high-wire act, such as TNT’s Charles Barkley, who calls him “my favorite player.” Now comes the fame.

Piston Coach Larry Brown says Ginobili is right there with Miami’s Dwyane Wade. Phoenix Coach Mike D’Antoni says Ginobili is “one of the best players on the planet.”

Who, me? says Ginobili.

“All of this attention feels very awkward,” he said before Game 2. “Of course I am enjoying it. I’m enjoying the whole experience of being in the Finals again with a different role. But I’m not the kind of guy who’s going to say how good I am and those kind of things. I’m very low-key.”

On the floor, he’s as high-key as it gets, leaping, hurtling, finger-rolling, dunking in traffic. In a league that’s always holding its breath, waiting for the next white star, he is the rarest kind, one with “street cred.”

Larry Bird, who was more skilled than athletic, had to prove himself every day. In 1987, when he was an eight-time All-NBA first-team selection, Detroit’s Dennis Rodman said he was overrated because of his race; Piston teammate Isiah Thomas agreed with him before saying he hadn’t meant it.

Ginobili wows everyone. Scoop Jackson of teen-oriented Slam magazine was blown away when he saw him in the 2002 world championships in Indianapolis, before Ginobili had arrived in the NBA.

“Maybe it’s too early to put this out there like this,” Jackson wrote for ESPN.com after Game 1, “but Manu Ginobili quite possibly has just become the most important basketball player in the world, at least until the end of this series.”

If Diego Maradona had come from Iowa, it couldn’t have been a bigger mystery than Ginobili’s arrival from soccer-mad Argentina. Ginobili’s father, though, was a basketball coach, two older brothers played for the national team and Manu always knew what he wanted to do. He just didn’t know he’d be so good.

It’s like Fernando Valenzuela, coming out of the Sonoran desert at 18 with a beautiful flowing delivery as well as the ability to hit and field well enough to win a Gold Glove and a Silver Bat.

There was only one Fernando. There’s only one Manu.

No. 1 in Your Heart,

No. 57 in the Draft

Then there’s the matter of how the Spurs beat the world to his door.

In 1997, Buford, then an assistant coach with the Spurs, went to see an Argentine point guard in a junior tournament but was more impressed by the team’s 20-year-old shooting guard.

With David Robinson, the Spurs were always drafting in the high 20s, long after the top prospects were gone. Popovich, who was then the general manager, had decided to go abroad, looking for young players they could stash in Europe.

This wasn’t new. The pioneer was Don Nelson, who was doing it in Golden State in the ‘80s. Nelson even went to Africa once, hoping to bring back a 7-footer, but was disappointed to find you couldn’t just walk down the street and see one.

Nelson’s son, Donnie, spent so much time overseas, he helped coach the Lithuanian Olympic team in 1996. Also on Nelson’s staff was Popovich.

So in 1999, the Spurs drafted Ginobili with the 57th pick, the second-to-last selection in the second and last round. No one was too excited about it, including Ginobili, who didn’t even know they had scouted him.

“I had no idea,” Ginobili said. “I went online a couple of months before the draft to see who was going to be picked and I was in none of them [mock drafts].

“So I said, ‘OK, I will be with the national team in Brazil and I will forget about the draft.’

“Then I remember the team manager waking me up and telling me I was drafted. I thought it was a mistake. I didn’t hear anything. Nobody ever contacted me. They just picked me.”

That summer, Popovich saw him for the first time in the American qualifying tournament in Puerto Rico and was glad they had done it.

“The first thing you saw was unbelievable competitiveness for a skinny little thing,” Popovich says. “Going to the hole and getting killed, not caring, coming right back the next time down the court and pulling up and shooting a three.

“You say, ‘Wait a minute, there’s ability attached to this competitiveness.’ He’s a young kid and at 50-whatever we were, you’re not too excited anyway.”

Ginobili, of Italian descent, was on his way to Italy to play professionally with things to learn, like just about everything: making two jump shots in a row, playing a little defense, not going behind his back every time.

“He played no defense,” Buford says. “I mean none. I’m thinking to myself, ‘There is no way this guy can defend well enough to come to the NBA.’ I remember thinking back then that Hedo [Turkoglu] was a much more impressive player.”

When he joined the Spurs in the fall of 2002 after three seasons in Italy, Ginobili still had things to learn. It was also clear he had star potential too, if Popovich didn’t kill him first.

Pop Goes the Rookie

Tony Parker, who had arrived from France the season before, at 19 to Ginobili’s 25 and playing a harder position, started from the beginning.

Ginobili’s adjustment was slower and more difficult. The Spurs are especially fond of telling about the time when, as a rookie, he tried what the San Antonio Express-News’ Johnny Ludden called a “630-degree wrap-around pass.” Wrote Ludden, “The ball, which Ginobili somehow nearly brought around his waist twice, ended up in the lap of a courtside fan.”

In one of the many talks they had that season, Popovich jumped all over Ginobili in the dressing room afterward, asking why he did it.

“It’s what I do,” Ginobili said. “It’s who I am.”

It wasn’t what Popovich did. An all-business, defense-oriented coach, he thought Ginobili’s job was to throw the ball to Duncan, shoot if he was open and otherwise guard the ball with his life. Ginobili saw Popovich upset a lot that season.

“First of all, you get worried,” Ginobili says, “because there’s a vein here that just gets so big, you think it’s going to explode.”

Slowed by an ankle injury, Ginobili played behind Stephen Jackson as a rookie, starting only five games, averaging 21 minutes and 7.6 points.

Ginobili calmed down enough to start half the Spurs’ games last season. His averages moved up only modestly, to 29 minutes and 12.8 points.

More was changing than Manu, however. Popovich, who had run a predictable, get-it-to-Duncan offense, was going to a motion offense with the floor spread.

Now his players were free to express themselves and there was nobody in the league as expressive as Ginobili.

These days, when Ginobili throws the ball to a fan or, as he did in the Phoenix series, to a wide-open Popovich, Popovich just grits his teeth.

“I actually thought that was to me, to keep me involved so I felt like I was doing something in the game,” Popovich said the next day.

“If it was a year and a half ago, I would have pulled a hamstring jumping off the bench trying to get to him first to tell him about that play. I think I just sat there with my chin in my hands, going, ‘Oh well.’

“It’s pretty obvious after a while that you’ve got to do that.... If you hold him back, it’s probably going to produce diminishing returns because his game is kind of like [Steve] Nash plays, kind of like [Allen] Iverson plays. They play at a high level of intensity, they like a little bit of chaos....

“Timmy helped with that. Timmy would come over and tap me on the back, like, ‘You go sit over there, it’ll be OK. We got this.’ ”

It’s party time in San Antonio now, where fans sing the familiar soccer chant: “Ma-Noo! Ma-Noo-Ma-Noo-Ma-Noo! Ma-Noooo, Ma-Noooo!”

Superstardom is out there waiting. Or not.

Ginobili was only the Spurs’ No. 3 scorer this season, behind Duncan and Parker. He may be the most unselfish spectacular player ever, content to throw the ball to Duncan all night. In five of 18 playoff games this spring, while he was breaking out, Ginobili didn’t take even 10 shots.

“Well, he’s probably not going to score more points than he’s scoring,” Popovich says. “It’s a team game, and he’s not going to be scoring 33 a game or anything like that.

“I think what he’s doing is fine. If he can do this for a whole career, he would be a pretty special player.”

He’s already special and getting more special. The question from now on is, how special?

* GAME 2 BOX SCORE, D8

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Going up

Manu Ginobili’s production has increased in the playoffs in each of his three seasons with San Antonio:

*--* Pts Ast Reb 2002-03 7.6 2.0 2.3 Playoffs 9.4 2.9 3.8 2003-04 12.8 3.8 4.5 Playoffs 13.0 3.1 5.3 2004-05 16.0 3.9 4.4 Playoffs 22.3 4.3 5.8

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