Watching Los Angeles Lakers point guard D’Angelo Russell play, you can see a lot of similarities between his game and that of Manu Ginobili. Both are crafty lefties who are as capable of scoring as they are throwing a pass through a narrow gap. Both will, on occasion, pass the ball in a way that will make your eyes widen as you say “whoa.” It turns out, Russell absolutely adored Ginobili growing up, and has patterned his game after the wily veteran. The first time Russell stood on the court with Ginobili, he was star-struck, he tells ESPN’s Baxter Holmes:
“Man,” Russell told Spurs guard Manu Ginobili. “It’s a pleasure to be out here with you.”
Russell can’t remember what Ginobili said in return, but for Russell, the moment was cool enough.
“I was like, ‘Damn,'” he said, “because he was one of my favorite players growing up.”
Russell told Holmes why he focused on Ginobili so heavily:
“You try to go to what you’re accustomed to,” he said. “And Manu was never as athletic, but he could really pass the ball. He could score the ball, and he was just so unpredictable, and he was a lefty, so he was a player that I really prided myself on being.”
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“When he gets in the game, it’s like, the whole persona of the game just changes,” he said. “I was like, man, if I can pride myself into being like that, just being a guy that’s so unpredictable that even at the age he’s at now [39], he’s so hard to guard.”
More than that, Russell said Ginobili was one of the first players to popularize the “Eurostep” dribble.
“Ever since then, everybody really started doing it,” he said.
Russell’s older brother Antonio elaborated on D’Angelo’s fandom:
“He used to tell me that his favorite player was Manu Ginobili,” Antonio Jr. said. “He always used to be like, ‘Manu Ginobili, Manu Ginobili, Manu Ginobili.'”
D’Angelo’s father, Antonio Sr., further expatiated on Russell’s childhood worshipping:
“As time went on, I saw him pattern his game [after him] and doing the things that Ginobili does,” Antonio Sr. said.
Holmes spoke to one more person from Russell’s youth — his childhood friend Jamie Johnson:
“Yeah, basically everything Ginobili did,” said Jamie Johnson, a childhood friend. “He tried to watch how Ginobili moved off the ball — just everything, as far as IQ-wise too, because Ginobili, of course, isn’t the fastest guy. [D’Angelo] understood that he wasn’t fast either, so he tried to find players that were similar to him.”
