BUENOS AIRES (ARGENTINA) - As Manu Ginobili sees his jersey hoisted to the rafters in San Antonio on Thursday, it seems fitting to look back at his storied career. Not just in the NBA, but for the impact he had for his national team and international basketball more generally. 

To San Antonio fans, he is the most loved Spurs player ever. To Argentina, he is a national hero. To the world, he is the person who made Team USA beatable, and forced the United States to reassess how it approached international basketball.

Emmanuel David Ginobili, or 'Manu' as he is more commonly known, has been retired for nearly a whole season, but his legacy on the game of basketball is unparalleled. From convincing every defender he's going right, despite nearly always going left, to catching bats mid-game at the AT&T Center, and showing the NBA how to effectively use the eurostep, he will always be remembered for specific moments on the basketball court in high pressured situations, but his impact is wider than a long list of incredible plays and game-winning shots.

Ginobili might be the most important individual in the modern history of basketball. There are players like Yao Ming, Arvydas Sabonis and Dirk Nowitzki who have made their individual mark on the international game, but there are few who can match him for career achievements, especially in winning the way that he has. The Argentine is just one of two players to have won an NBA championship, a EuroLeague title and an Olympic gold medal.

Ginobili was part of a basketball playing family. His father Jorge coached in the family’s home town of Bahía Blanca in Argentina. And while his older brothers Leandro and Sebastián also played at amateur and professional levels (and the latter is now coach of the same club his father once led), Manu had a level of talent and competitive fire that pushed his playing career to a level that no one in the family, or the country of Argentina, would have thought possible.

After a few years playing in the national league’s top division, Ginobili represented his country at the FIBA 22 & Under World Championship in 1997. The competition was tough but Argentina played well and made a push for a medal. In the third-place playoff game against Yugoslavia, Ginobili played 20 minutes but managed just two points and was a non-factor, despite being a big part of the push to get them there.

In the previous game, he was his usual reckless self and scored 20 points, leading his team to a three-point loss against the eventual champion Australia. That frenetic scoring and ambitious play-making caught the attention of RC Buford, the San Antonio Spurs General Manager, who told Zach Lowe in a 2016 piece for ESPN: "He was like a wild colt out there… some of it made sense, some of it didn't."

At the time, non-US players were still irregular in the NBA. The game was dominated by big bodies such as Hakeem Olajuwon, Patrick Ewing and David Robinson. But after the likes of Vlade Divac and Dražen Petrović proved they could play, NBA front offices started looking at international projects like Toni Kukoč and even proven international entities like Sabonis.

The role for versatile, talented players who loved passing wasn’t secure in the NBA when the league was largely built around speed, strength and athleticism, but the opportunity for Ginobili to grow as a player came in 1998 when he moved to Italy and led Viola Reggio Calabria to a promotion to the first division. A year later, the San Antonio Spurs drafted the rights to Ginobili, though he wouldn't play a game in the NBA for a few more years.

Instead, he moved clubs to Virtus Bologna, with which he won a EuroLeague championship, a league MVP, the Finals MVP, and back-to-back scoring titles.

By now, a few of his national teammates had also flown the nest. Juan 'Pepe' Sanchez had played in college in the USA and was drafted into the NBA by the Philadelphia 76ers a year after Ginobili. Civil unrest in Argentina caused many young professional athletes to play in safer countries that hadn’t frozen bank accounts, so Ginobili's fellow countrymen followed his lead by going to Italy or elsewhere in Europe.

Meanwhile, Argentina still managed to improve at international tournaments. After making his senior debut in 1998, Ginobili helped his country reach the final at the 2002 FIBA World Cup. Argentina faced Yugoslavia for a medal, in a rematch of the 1997 U21 event, but sadly, Ginobili would be a no-show once again – this time, it was because of an ankle injury he suffered in the semi-final. Despite this, his teammates were still up by two points with 17 seconds to go in the fourth quarter. In a frustrating moment that would stay with the team for two years, Argentina let the game slip away from them in overtime and they would settle for the silver medal.

Ginobili arrived in San Antonio in 2002, just in time for the Spurs to make a run at a final championship for David Robinson. Head coach Gregg Popovich struggled to adapt to the feisty playing style of Ginobili early in their partnership. The Argentine had a penchant for playing good physical defense but would gamble for steals or to save the ball from going out of bounds. Later in his career, Popovich was asked about their relationship and he said: "In the beginning, he would do some things that I thought were unnecessary until that point came when he came to me and said, 'I am Manu. This is what I do.' I said, 'OK, you go ahead and try to save one or two of those passes per game and I’m going to shut up one or two times when they happen during the game.' We came to this compromise and it’s been lovey dovey ever since.”

“In the beginning, he would do some things that I thought were unnecessary until that point came when he came to me and said, ‘I am Manu. This is what I do.’ I said, ‘OK, you go ahead and try to save one or two of those passes per game and I’m going to shut up one or two times when they happen during the game.’ We came to this compromise and it’s been lovey dovey ever since.”

Still, Ginobili learned a lot about playing within the NBA system, and showed an ability to be a closer in big games. It was a useful trait to develop going in to the summer of 2004, when Argentina's national team travelled to Athens in Greece for the Olympic Games.

The team's first game of the tournament was against a team of old rivals, but under a new flag. Yugoslavia was no more, but many of its players were wearing the uniforms of Serbia and Montenegro. The win looked impossible after a free throw put Serbia and Montenegro up by one with 3.8 seconds left, but as time ticked away, Ginobili got up the court and open for a split second to receive a pass and hit a double-clutch layup at the buzzer while on the move and under pressure. Argentina had finally beat a team that had caused them problems for years.

All the drama, emotion and glory lasted two days until Argentina were swiftly beaten by Spain, but all that defeat did was refocus the team’s energy on the biggest prize. With China and New Zealand easily beaten, Ginobili and his squad secured a place in the next round. The team was focused against Greece, and even the loud home crowd couldn’t stop the Argentinians. This gave them the confidence needed to face the USA and Ginobili led the way with 29 points to set up a final against Italy. The final proved easy and the gold medal was in the bag from the opening tip.

After seeing Argentina run the gauntlet over the summer, many of Ginobili's teammates joined the NBA to see their captain continue his winning ways with the San Antonio Spurs, earning a place at the NBA All-Star Game and another championship alongside Tim Duncan, while averaging 20 points, 5 rebounds, 4 assists and 1.2 steals throughout the playoffs.

Two years later, Ginobili averaged 16, 5, 3 and 1.7 on the way to another title with the Spurs, and he returned to international play the following summer at the Beijing 2008 Olympics. Argentina won another medal, this time bronze, and while the achievements kept rolling in, there was a stretch of years when Ginobili's teams' performances didn't result in a prize. Argentina slipped slightly due to a mixture of age, rest and injury, while the rise of superteams in the NBA with the Boston Celtics, Los Angeles Lakers and the Miami Heat meant that San Antonio had similar troubles of age and injury to deal with, not to mention a lower level of talent.

Instead, other international legends started rising through the ranks. Players like Yao Ming shifted the landscape for Chinese players coming to America in the same way that Ginobili did for Argentina. Pau Gasol won a FIBA World Cup with Spain in 2006 then picked up titles in the NBA with the Lakers. And Dirk Nowitzki won bronze at the 2002 World Cup, made the 2008 Olympics with Germany - a first for the country since 1992 - and he kept LeBron James, Dwyane Wade and Chris Bosh - three Olympic champions in 2008 - at bay during the 2011 NBA Finals.

When Team USA finished sixth at the FIBA World Cup in 2002, it was at the hands of Argentina and Manu Ginobili. The 'Dream Team' suffered its first international defeat since 1992 to Argentina, and the South Americans beat the US again in 2004 to show the world on the biggest stage that basketball was no longer a one-nation sport. The achievement coincided with the NBA being flooded with international players that changed the landscape and playing style of the league, and no individual was more successful in the team environment than the feisty Argentinian shooting guard.

Since missing out on international medals, the USA has revitalised its programme and reeled off a list of three-straight Olympic gold medals and two FIBA Basketball World Cups. And while winning ways cooled off slightly for Ginobili, he still battled and fought to get back to an elite level with his respective teams. Each year it seemed like pundits and analysts would write the Spurs off, including the likes of Chris Mannix at Sports Illustrated in 2010, when he wrote: "The Spurs may need another infusion of talent if they hope to extend this group’s run. That could translate to either [Tony] Parker or George Hill being dangled in a trade. Whatever happens, it seems unlikely this group will remain intact."

But Ginobili wasn’t having any of it, and said: "I have been telling people this for five years, when people [first] started talking about age. I think we are always competitive. I would go with these guys again."

And he did, time and time again. Ginobili re-laced his sneakers hundreds more times, and blew through the bottom of them on several occasions. But the persistence paid off. In 2013, it looked like the Spurs, having won 57 games to finish second in the Western Conference, would make it back to the mountain top. They reached the summit, but faced a Miami Heat superteam that broke the hearts of the ageing Spurs on a miracle three-point shot from the legendary shooter Ray Allen.

Ginobili told Adrian Wojnarowski on his podcast in 2016 that he wasn't sure there would be another run after losing in the way the Spurs did. He said: "I wanted to hear it from RC or Pop. I was going to go back to Argentina in the first days of July and nobody called me. So I had to go back and I wanted to hear it from him straight... I wanted to hear what RC thought, if he thought it was time to rebuild, go a different way, or they thought I didn’t have it anymore."

Ginobili re-signed and San Antonio went back to the NBA Finals to face the same Miami squad. Not only did the Spurs beat the Heat, they dismantled the team within five games, and LeBron James left South Beach that summer. Ginobili averaged 14 points, 3 rebounds, 4.4 assists and a steal to play the perfect support act to Kawhi Leonard and work alongside his long-time teammates Tim Duncan and Tony Parker.

And as Ginobili reached the tail end of his career, he made one last push with the Argentinian national team at the 2016 Olympics.

Alongside fellow Olympic champions from 2004 - Andrés Nocioni, Carlos Delfino and Luis Scola - Ginobili remained a leader on the squad, emotionally definitely, but also as the second leading scorer and assist man. It didn’t end in glory, but fittingly at the quarter final stage in a loss to the USA.

USA Basketball had responded and been rebuilt since missing out on Olympic gold in 2004, and while the 2016 squad might not have been packed with stars, it was a unit, built like a team rather than a number of individuals.

An exact mirror image of the Argentina team that Ginóbili led to victory 12 years earlier.

FIBA