What a difference a few weeks make.
Some of you may recall a play during Game 5 of the Western Conference finals two and a half weeks ago when Manu Ginobili was rejected hard by Caron Butler on a drive and dunk attempt late in the third quarter against the Oklahoma City Thunder. The missed bucket didn’t matter too much in the grand scheme of things since the Spurs won 117-89, but it sure received a lot of attention in the Spurs’ locker room.
Fast forward to Sunday when Ginobili made one of the plays of the game in Game 5 by dunking hard on Chris Bosh in the second quarter as part of an 8-0 individual run. After the Spurs took the lead in that quarter, they didn’t relinquish it.
Manu says the dunk was redemption for what happened against Butler and OKC.
“The last time I tried (a dunk like that) I got blocked by Caron Butler against OKC badly,” Ginobili said about his dunk on Chris Bosh in Game 5, as transcribed by Eye on Basketball. “And I was made fun of by my teammates in a rough way. They actually made me promise that I wasn’t going to try that again, and I said I won’t try that again.”
If Ginobili promised he wouldn’t try a dunk like that again, what made him do it?
“But in the heat of the battle with the adrenaline pumping and the situation really, I don’t know what happened. I went hard and once I was in the air, I felt like I had a shot, and I tried. I think it helped me, and it helped the team too to get pumped up.”
Tony Parker also talked about the significance of the dunk.
“That was a big dunk,” said Parker after the game. “Manu was just in that mode.”
Man, can you imagine the things they were saying to Manu after he got rejected on that play? They must have ridden him hard for it! At least he didn’t listen to his teammates and went right to the hole like his instincts told him to. He still has it.
