GinĂ³bili comes from a family of professional basketball players. He spent the early part of his basketball career in Argentina and Italy, where he holds dual citizenship, and won several individual and team honors. His stint with Italian side Kinder Bologna was particularly productive; he won two Italian League MVP awards, theEuroLeague Finals MVP and the 2001 EuroLeague championship and Triple Crown. Selected as the 57th overall pick in the 1999 NBA draft, the shooting guard is considered one of the biggest draft steals of all time. GinĂ³bili joined the Spurs in 2002, and soon became a key player for the team. He has earned four NBA championships and was named an All-Star in 2005 and 2011. In the 2007–08 season, he was named the NBA Sixth Man of the Year. GinĂ³bili has also enjoyed success with the Argentina national team. He made his debut in 1998, and helped win the gold medal during the 2004 Olympics Basketball Tournament.
GinĂ³bili comes from a family of basketball players. His oldest brother, Leandro, retired in 2003 after seven years in the Argentine basketball league, while brother SebastiĂ¡n has played in both the Argentine local league and in the Spanish 2nd-tier level Liga Española de Baloncesto. Their father Jorge was a coach at a club in BahĂa Blanca, Argentina, where GinĂ³bili learned to play the game. Given the proliferation of basketball clubs in BahĂa Blanca and his idolization of Michael Jordan, GinĂ³bili’s love for basketball grew rapidly.
GinĂ³bili has dual citizenship with Argentina and Italy, thanks to his Marchesan descent.  As a result of his travels, he can speak Spanish, Italian and English fluently. He used his Italian citizenship, while he played professional basketball in Italy. In his free time, GinĂ³bili enjoys listening to Latin music, watching movies and travelling. In 2004, he married fellow Argentine Marianela Oroño. On 16 May 2010, his wife gave birth to twin boys, Dante and Nicola. On April 21, 2014, his wife gave birth to their third son, Luca.
The Argentine joined the Spurs for the 2002–03 NBA season, where he played backup for veteran guard Steve Smith. He spent much of the early season injured, and found it hard to adjust to the NBA’s style of play. As his injury improved, so did GinĂ³bili, winning the Western Conference Rookie of the Month in March, and being named to the All-Rookie Second Team at the end of the season. Still, he only started in five games as the Spurs chalked up a 60–22 regular season win–loss record. The Spurs then entered the playoffs eager to upend the defending champions Los Angeles Lakers, at which point, GinĂ³bili rose to prominence.
GinĂ³bili played with the junior Argentine national team at the 1997 FIBA Under-21 World Championship, where his team finished in 4th place. GinĂ³bili is a member of the senior Argentine national basketball team, and made his senior debut during the 1998 FIBA World Championship in Athens. He also played at the 2002 FIBA World Championship, where he won a silver medal. His best accomplishment as a member of the national team came at the 2004 Athens Summer Olympics when Argentina became the first team other than Team USA to win the gold medal in 16 years. The highlight of the tournament was his game-winning buzzer beater with 0.7 seconds remaining, on the opening day of the Olympics, in a game versus Serbia and Montenegro. GinĂ³bili led the team in both scoring (19.3 points per game) and assists (3.3 assists per game).
GinĂ³bili is a 6 ft 6 in (1.98 m), 205 lb (93 kg) left-handed shooting guard who has been deployed either as a sixth man or starter for the Spurs. He has established himself as a reliable and versatile back court presence, and was a relatively late bloomer, entering the NBA at age 25 in a period when entering the NBA as a teenager was very common.
Apart from his up-tempo and aggressive style of play, GinĂ³bili is known for his clutch play. This is documented by his numerous European league MVP awards, and his performances in San Antonio’s championship-winning campaigns. GinĂ³bili’s modus operandi however, causes concerns for some of his opponents. His go-to move is either a 3-pointer or a fierce attack to the basket, while he often lowers his head when driving to the basket to collapse defenses and create shots or passes to his teammates. Although Ginobili was not the originator or the first to bring the move to the NBA, he is credited for popularizing the Euro step in the league.
He is also willing to draw charges on defense. In 2007, he was even listed by ESPN writer Thomas Neumann at No. 6 on the list of greatest floppers in NBA history. Five years later, Ian Thomsen, a Sports Illustrated columnist, grouped GinĂ³bili with fellow European league players Anderson VarejĂ£o and Vlade Divac as the players who “made [flopping] famous”, by exaggerating contact on the court in a manner analogous to diving in soccer games.
He has a willingness to do what it takes to win, and to do it at the highest possible level of intensity, every single minute he steps on the court.
Having traversed the major basketball continents in his basketball career, GinĂ³bili is one of the few players who has enjoyed success under both the physical, one-on-one play of the NBA and the more technical, jump-shooting rule set of FIBA. He is one of only two players in basketball history, along with Bill Bradley, to win the EuroLeague, an Olympic gold medal, and an NBA Championship ring. He is also the first non-U.S. player to win both the NBA championship ring and the Olympic gold medal, and the second Latin American to be selected to play in an NBA All-Star game (after Panama‘s Rolando Blackman).
In 2007, ESPN sportswriter John Hollinger ranked GinĂ³bili as the sixth best international player then-active in the NBA, describing the 57th draft pick as “one of the great draft heists of all time”, and attributed the trend of NBA teams drafting developing European players to the success of the Argentine. The following year, GinĂ³bili was named by ESPN as one of the best EuroLeague players to have graced the NBA.
