"Natural speed please."
Ten years ago, San Antonio Spurs general manager R.C. Buford walked into a steak house in Indianapolis, leaned into a private dining room, and witnessed Manu Ginobili and the brokenhearted Argentine silver medalists gathered at a long table for dinner. Children bounced on knees, wives and girlfriends chatted, and the fiber of a 2004 Olympic gold medalist strengthened itself in the aftermath of basketball's '02 world championships.
Argentina had delivered the United States its first loss in the post-Dream Team era, sending a ragged and motley Team USA tumbling toward sixth place and a well-deserved moment of global reckoning. USA Basketball had no system, no soul, no vision. The program had collapsed under the weight of its own neglect and hubris, a sense of entitlement that ultimately met its international match with a relentless band of brothers out of Argentina.
Argentina had long been a good team, but Manu Ginobili's emerging greatness promised to make them champions. He was daring and fearless, alive with a fervor and an innate sense of duty and obligation for the greater good of his basketball teams.
"The American guys had limousines lined up at the team hotel to get out of Indy as soon as they could," Buford said by phone from San Antonio this week. "The way the Argentines played, the passion they had for their national program, the way that they cared about each other, was something that was clearly missing with the U.S. program."
A senior USA Basketball official, Sean Ford, happened to be at the restaurant in July 2002, and the scene of the Argentine team stayed with him. As much as any national team on the planet, Argentina's rise to relevance demanded something closer to a revolution than a response stateside. Jerry Colangelo and Mike Krzyzewski were hired, Kobe Bryant and Jason Kidd were recruited, and truer training camps and feeder systems were installed.
Make no mistake: Argentina became a blueprint for the United States on its re-ascension to dominance. Yes, talent mattered, but so did culture, and no one has embodied team the way that Argentina has with Ginobili as the best player and leader. Another Spur, Fabricio Oberto, taught Ginobili on the national team, and he's passed it down, too.
Ten years later, Ginobili, 35, is on the cusp of saying goodbye to international basketball, but his legacy is unparalleled in this Olympic basketball tournament. On his way out, he's still averaging the most points, steals, and holding the highest efficiency ranking of these Games. He's still going to the floor and chasing loose balls, a national hero with the spirit to honor that Argentine uniform and flag.
As a young boy, Ginobili watched Maradona win the World Cup for Argentina in '86, but Ginobili turned out to be his country's Michael Jordan.
"It would be a little arrogant if I say that we are a blueprint of the USA Basketball," Ginobili told Yahoo! Sports. "But I think we did a heck of a job for a decade and am incredibly proud of what we've accomplished. And a lot of teams started to maintain a group of players – a core – that played together."
Ginobili was truly one of the children of the NBA's globalization, a young soccer player mesmerized over the flickering images of the Jordan and Magic Johnson highlights broadcast every Sunday night at midnight on Channel 9 in Argentina. Commissioner David Stern sold the rights for $2,000 to an eager basketball and soccer analyst named Adrian Paenza, and those images inspired Ginobili to try it all himself.
"When I was a kid, I didn't even dream of playing in the NBA," Ginobili says. "Nobody ever from Argentina played in the NBA when I was 10. I was watching MJ's tapes and thinking he was from another planet, that he was unreachable, untouchable – the same as Magic and Larry.
"And then I find myself, years later, raising the same trophy as they did."
Three times, Ginobili lifted an NBA championship trophy with the Spurs. He is the only player in history to have won an NBA title, an Olympic gold medal, and a Euroleague championship. That'll probably stand the test of time, too. Across the past decade, the two teams that have most shaped his legacy – the Spurs and Argentina – have been reflections of the culture his presence fosters, a touchstone player and leader that fits into environments and programs with precisely what teams need out of him.
