#58 - Manu Ginobili is Ilana Verdansky

Seduction. The first word that comes to mind for both arguably the greatest 6th man in NBA history and Jacob’s #1 hired gun is seduction. My mind then wanders to other words like ‘worldly’, ‘mysterious’, ‘coming off the bench’ which is mostly about Manu, ‘vest on a beach’ which is mostly about Ilana, ‘buffalo wings’ which is mostly about me thinking I want to eat those this weekend, ‘all buffalo cops are bastards’ which is mostly about how cops in Buffalo suck shit, ‘Glow’ which is mostly about how I still haven’t watched the third season yet and my brain is completely scattered. Ok! 

If someone said that 4x NBA champion Manu Ginobili was the greatest 6th man in league history, I wouldn’t say they were wrong. I’m not keen on ranking players, but they’re not wrong. Someone else might say John Havlicek, who is no doubt on this list as well, and I’d be like I mean you’re not wrong either. And then if both of those someones were still standing there, I’d be like have you donated to BLM and/or any of the bail funds yet because if not then you’ve reached my correspondence cap for this moment. It could be recency bias or age-ism or whatever by me as a soon-to-be 37 year old, but I saw with my two damn eyes the San Antonio Spurs win those four championships on live television - with the first three happening across Manu’s first five years in the damn league - and just make teams look damn foolish countless times. The big three - Tony, Manu, Tim - ruled the league for many years and Manu is up there for sure as one of the greatest of whatever. 

Seduction! Manu’s whole game was seduction- he didn’t start most games, he came off the bench, he didn’t seem particularly fast or tall or long or strong, the Euro Step is all about this easy awkwardness that tricks defenders, he was older, his top tier flopping seduce and deceived all the refs, didn’t shoot much but was a clutch shooter, and he just sneakily piled up points at times and really all his points scored seemed to matter more. He came into the league at 25 and Gregg Popovich knew just how to manage and use him in games like this Bourne Identity international assassin who could blend into any crowd. Is Italian? Is Argentitian? Is he just some guy from West Texas? He kind of seems slow, but here is on a fast break again or scoring a layup with his off-hand. Manu just pulled his opposition in and then he’d lower his head and bowl them over toward the hoop or they’d play off him and he’d drill a three. He was an enigma. 

Ilana’s the great international seductress. Got a Russian name, sounds kind of British, sounds kind of Israeli, looks like she could be from anywhere. You’re 5 seasons into Lost before she shows up, so she’s older in that regards to the show. Ilana is in a burn unit wrapped in bandages and we have no idea and will never know why when Jacob comes to her bedside and tells her she’s got some people to round-up for him, which is the most coming off the bench/6th man situation ever. Ilana legit seduces Sayid at a bar and gets him to legit forget all his worries, drink expensive scotch with her, and then go up to a hotel room with her where she kicks my dude in his face and pulls a gun on him and captures his ass. I will say while Sayid is a badass, a good looking woman bests Sayid time and time again- Nadia, Rousseau, Shannon, Ilana, that assassin woman who Widmore hires and he dates for like a few months whose name I can’t remember off the top of my head. Maybe Ilana’s ‘Euro Step’ is tricking Sayid into taking her boot off and then kicking the motherfucker in the face. 

Ilana’s a part of some championship caliber teams as she’s the leader of Jacob’s off THE island thugs who round-up people. Ilana’s the only member of that team that survives after the big reveal that Locke is still dead and the man walking around as Locke is really The Smoke Monster. Ilana starts rolling with the big time champ team of Ben, Sun, Hurley, later Jack and so forth to take down said The Smoke Monster. What else? She makes Ben dig his own grave at gun point, so that she can kill him and throw him in there. That’s some championship 6th man shit. Ilana can read hieroglyphs or can spot at least a couple and doing so she ends up figuring out a secret escape room in THE Temple when THE Smoke Monster is massacring everybody there, so she saves a bunch of main characters with that- pretty fucking clutch. Oh yeah, Ilana does blow up from some loose dynamite in a slapstick bit callback to another character blowing up in the same damn way, but let’s not focus on that.

Ilana and Manu are fucking sexy. Speak multiple languages, you can’t tell where they’re from so your mind is just wandering and wondering, they’re seduction superstars like I keep fucking saying, Ilana makes wearing a suit vest over a tanktop on a beach look damn good and you know Manu could do the same no problem. I mean, it's not ASMR, but when Ilana says 'Ricardus' - oof, tingles all over my body. And I bet Manu could do that too. Yeah, both fuck.