NBA Top 50: Manu Ginobili (No. 12)

FanHouse's Tom Ziller argues his ranking of the top 50 players in the NBA.

For a few easily ascertained reasons, Manu Ginobili almost never get mentioned in the same breath as the league's top two-guards. He gets ignored in favor of fellows like Michael Redd and, prior to last season, Ray Allen. Manu gets respect -- don't get that twisted. But it's always as a sixth man, as a firestarter and not as one of the best in the NBA, no qualifiers necessary. His role and style are so different from Kobe and Wade and Redd and Iverson that it knocks him out of the conversation, which is unfair to all of us.

Manu, despite being a primary scorer for the Spurs, has never topped 20 points per game. He has also never topped 31 minutes per game. A.I. outscored Manu by seven points a game last season, which would indicate A.I. is the better scorer, right? But when you adjust for minutes (Iverson played 42), the two turn out virtually identical per-minute scoring numbers. There would be a further adjustment for pace, and Ginobili takes fewer FGAs and FTAs per minute than Iverson ... while still being his equal as a scorer.

Ginobili has a tremendous shooting stroke from everywhere on the court. We know all about his slashing efforts, including that old bastion of self-respect and congeniality, the flop. I'm not here to cast judgments on sissy, nancy-boy tactics, though: Manu works to get himself to the charity stripe, but he doesn't rely on it: he's a career 38% three-point shooter, and a guy who takes plenty of those. He's in a similar category as Chauncey Billups and Kevin Martin in terms of maximizing output by focusing on drawing fouls and hitting threes; it's a huge boon to efficiency when you make your toughest shots at the level of highest reward, or when you offset them by drawing a whistle. If you can shoot as well as Manu from distance, you should hit that buzzer repeatedly. Manu realizes this.

One area of Manu's game which is especially strong is rebounding. The Spurs have one of the better rebounders of all-time in Tim Duncan, but one man isn't winning the war on the boards. San Antonio has always focused on adding pieces which rebound well for their position. Manu's a classic case. The average two-guard corrals approximately 6.5-7% of all rebound opportunities when they are on the court. Manu ups that to 9%. It doesn't look like much in the box score -- again, the minutes per game and the glacial S.A. pace dampen the normal counting stats -- but it's a real boon.

Manu has also become an above-average passer. He turns the ball over a little too much, but it's acceptable given his role as primary playmaker when he subs in. (He uses 28% of the Spurs' possessions when he's in the game, an extremely high number.) When we look at Manu's development, it's easy to wonder if perhaps every team could benefit from slotting their best perimeter scorer in as a sixth man. It's a tricky gambit. Last season, S.A. had some truly woeful offensive performances, ones in which the team began a quarter in the tank and couldn't pull themselves out. Two years, Duncan was fresh enough to keep that from happening, and the league hadn't figured out Tony Parker (to the minor degree he has been figured out as of now, that came quite recently). Manu might not have been the team's best weapon two years ago. But he's a little more necessary these days -- and his minutes have been increasing. Could we see Manu slotted back in as a full-time starter once he's back from injury?

That's the key: you have to be able to run an efficient offense without your top threat in order to allow your top threat to come off the bench. A Kings line-up without Kevin Martin is going to get skunked before the six-minute mark. It might work in Milwaukee, which either Redd or Richard Jefferson sliding in off the bench, assuming Andrew Bogut and Charlie Villanueva can put points up. Could Miami put Wade in Team USA mode, and let Shawn Marion and Michael Beasley handle scoring duties early? It's an interesting question each team needs to answer individually. Almost none will decide the ploy is right for them. As I said, the Spurs could very well abandon it, should Parker slip or Michael Finley disappear. And in Manu, they have the perfect player for the strategy. There aren't many others who could do what he does.