The Cleveland Cavaliers had a close loss to the San Antonio Spurs last night, but at least they showed respect to former Spurs bench extraordinaire, Manu Ginobili.
The Cleveland Cavaliers had a nice game against the postseason-bound San Antonio Spurs last night, as they played well on the road, but eventually lost by six points.
It wasn’t the outcome players on Cleveland wanted, obviously, but given that the Spurs celebrated Manu Ginobili night, where they put his jersey in their rafters, it was refreshing to know that a few Cavs players, Kevin Love and Jordan Clarkson namely, discussed what Ginobili meant to them before the game.
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Ginobili played on San Antonio from 2002 through the 2017-18 season (16 seasons), and averaged 13.3 points on 52.0 percent effective field goal shooting, to go with 3.8 assists and 3.5 rebounds in 25.4 minutes per game, per Basketball Reference.
For the majority of his outstanding career with the Spurs, he came off the bench.
Clarkson, who is one of the NBA’s best bench scorers currently, with 16.9 points per game on 50.7 percent effective field goal shooting this season, talked about what Ginobili meant to him and how Clarkson has embraced a sixth man role, due to Ginobili.
The Cleveland Cavaliers’ bench scorer is from San Antonio, so that perspective added a whole different element to the Ginobili influence, too. Here’s a bit of what Clarkson said about Ginobili (per the San Antonio Express-News‘ Tom Orsborn) before the game.
"“He made it cool,” Clarkson said of coming off the bench. “He came in there, impacted the game. He wasn’t a starter, but he did great things. He kind of opened the door for a lot of sixth men who came after him.”"
Clarkson is spot-on here, as Ginobili, who won four championships with the Spurs in his career, is one of the best sixth men in the history of the NBA, as he impacted the game in a positive way on both ends, and was a great closer for San Antonio.
You can view a video put together by the Cleveland Cavaliers in which Clarkson really goes into detail about Ginobili’s imprint on him below, with really making the Euro step move mainstream, among other awesome stuff, and I highly recommend it. Good on you for paying homage to one of the game’s all-time greats, JC, as I’m sure the Spurs and Ginobili were very appreciative of it.
"Growing up, they meant everything to us."
— Cleveland Cavaliers (@cavs) March 28, 2019
With the squad heading back to his hometown, @JordanClarksons reflects back on how the @spurs and @manuginobili helped shape his game today. pic.twitter.com/6IPPqqIhw8
Cavs star big Kevin Love also showed (no pun intended, really) love to the former Spur bench stud before the game (h/t Fox Sports Ohio), just like how he paid homage to Dallas Mavericks legend Dirk Nowitzki before his last game facing him.
The Cleveland Cavaliers also did this sort of thing before the last time they faced the best player in Miami Heat history, in Dwyane Wade. Again, good on you, K-Love, and good on you as a team overall, Cavs.
As a side note, you can view the Ginobili rafters ceremony here (courtesy of the NBA).