BY JOHN HOLLINGER
June 14, 2005
We've finally found Manu Ginobili's calling. Much like Jimi Hendrix was put on this Earth to play guitar and Marv Albert was born to announce basketball games, Ginobili is here for one purpose: to ruin Larry Brown's life.
By now, the Detroit Pistons' coach must be having nightmares about the Spurs' forward. Remember, it was Ginobili who started Brown's basketball year by carving up Team USA's defense in Argentina's Olympic semifinal win, forcing the U.S. to settle for a bronze medal. Now he's on track to finish off Brown's year by doing the same thing with the Spurs.
San Antonio's mighty wingman was simply awesome in the first two games of the NBA Finals. To say this is an unexpected development would be an understatement. After the way Detroit's Tayshaun Prince kept Miami's Dwyane Wade under wraps for much of the Eastern Conference finals, it seemed Ginobili would have a tough time reaching his regular-season averages of 16.0 points per game and 47.1% shooting from the field. Instead, Ginobili has vastly exceeded those numbers, burning the Pistons for 53 points in the first two games and taking over both contests in the fourth quarter.
If you're looking for a stat that shows how amazing Ginobili has been, try this one on. I keep a stat called "True Shooting Percentage," which measures what a player's shooting percentage would be if we included foul shots and 3-pointers. A normal figure is in the low 50s; in the first two games of the Finals, Ginobili's mark is 84.2%! He has 53 points and eight missed shots. No wonder the Spurs have walked to a 2-0 lead.
While we're seeing Ginobili at his absolute best, this looks like less of a fluke when seen in the context of the rest of his postseason. Ginobili has played brilliant basketball throughout, sporting the highest playoff Player Efficiency Rating (my measure of a player's per minute statistical production) of any player whose team made it past the first round - surpassing even his superstar teammate Tim Duncan.
For the postseason, Magic Manu is shooting 52.9% from the floor, averaging 27.1 points and 5.3 assists per 40 minutes, making nearly half his 3-pointers, and maintaining a sizzling True Shooting Percentage of 67.8%. His PER in 28 games is 27.73, which would have ranked second behind only Kevin Garnett during the regular season.
With Ginobili's postseason outburst, the Spurs have effectively gone from a one-superstar team centered around Duncan to a two-superstar powerhouse. That combination is essentially unbeatable, because the Spurs pair their superstar power with dominant defense.
While we've all been left slack jawed by Ginobili's mad forays to the rim, Detroit's offensive anemia in the first two games is an equally important development. Perhaps we shouldn't be surprised: Detroit ranks only 10th among the 16 playoff teams in postseason Offensive Efficiency, my measure of points scored per 100 possessions. The Pistons' playoff mark of 101.0 is well below the postseason average of 104.9, but Detroit outlasted its Eastern Conference foes mainly because of its tough defense. Going against the league's best defensive team in San Antonio was bound to be a challenge for Detroit.
Nevertheless, we didn't expect it to be this challenging. After two games, the Pistons still haven't broken the 80-point barrier, and they've shot badly in doing so - 37.7% in the opener, 40.2% in Game 2. They've also limited their options by taking almost all their shots from 2-point range: The Pistons have attempted just 12 3-pointers thus far and made just one. Contrast that with the Spurs, who shot 11-of-24 from downtown in Game 2, allowing them to win handily despite making fewer 2-point field goals than the Pistons.
Individually, Detroit's leading scorers haven't managed to get untracked. Richard Hamilton has been harassed by San Antonio's Bruce Bowen into a 12-for-36 shooting performance. All the easy looks he got off curls in the conference finals against Miami have vanished, replaced by contested jumpers, pressured drives to the basket, and lots of whining at the refs.
The Spurs have similarly erased Rasheed Wallace from the Pistons' attack. The long-armed power forward made his first three shots in Game 1 but hasn't been heard from since, with a total of 17 points in the two games. His frontcourt counterpart, Ben Wallace, has fared even worse. Normally an energizer at both ends of the floor with his defense and rebounding, the Defensive Player of the Year has managed a modest 7.0 points and 7.5 rebounds, and his ineffective play spurred Brown to yank him in both fourth quarters in a desperate search for more offense.
Detroit's only saving grace has been Chauncey Billups, who is taking advantage of his physical mismatch against the Spurs' Tony Parker. Billups's 25 points and six assists kept the Pistons alive in Game 1 - until Ginobili took over in the fourth quarter. In Game 2, Billups wasn't quite as proficient, but he scored six points in a 10-3 run early in the fourth quarter to close the gap to 81-73 - at which point Ginobili struck again to put things out of reach.
Even defensively, Ginobili has been in the thick of it all. While everyone is raving about Manu's offense, he held Prince to 5-for-21 shooting and just 14 points in Games 1 and 2 combined. He's handcuffed Prince by fronting him in the post, overplaying his left hand, and relying on Duncan to bail him out around the basket. Ginobili also has four steals, including a spectacular deflection and save on an entry pass to Prince in the fourth quarter of Game 2.It provided the exclamation point on the Spurs' game clinching 13-0 fourth-quarter run, one in which Manu scored or assisted on 11 of the 13 points.
In doing so, the Argentinan has turned the Finals upside down. Detroit figured it would play San Antonio roughly to a draw at the small forward spot because of Prince's prowess. Instead, The Pistons have been outscored 53-14 at the small forward spot.
For Game 3, the Pistons should assign a different defender to Ginobili, or even try double-teaming him, because the current strategy isn't working. They've lost the two games by a total of 36 points, while Ginobili has beaten Prince individually by 39. It doesn't take much to connect the dots here - this match up is the difference between the two teams. Once again, Manu Ginobili is haunting Larry Brown.