#1
Manu Ginobili and Pau Gasol are two of four active NBA players who have been the flag bearers for their countries at the Summer Olympics.
#2
Tony Parker played his first Spurs game on Oct. 30, 2001, when he was 19 years old. Entering the 2016-17 season, Parker has spent 44 percent of his life with the Spurs.
#3
Manu Ginobili is one of two players to win an Olympic Gold Medal, an NBA Championship and Euroleague Championship. The other is former U.S. Senator Bill Bradley.
#4
Tony Parker and Manu Ginobili are the only active NBA players with four or more NBA Championships. Two NBA players who won five champions – Kobe Bryant and Tim Duncan - recently retired.
#5
Kawhi Leonard is the third player in NBA history to win both a Defensive Player of the Year award and an NBA Finals MVP. The other two are Hall-of-Famers Hakeem Olajuwon and Michael Jordan.
#6
Pau Gasol is the first NBA player ever to be traded for his brother. In 2008, Memphis traded Pau to the Los Angeles Lakers for a group of players that included the draft rights to Pau’s younger brother Marc Gasol. Pau won two NBA championships with the Lakers.
#7
Patty Mills is the second Australian to play for a Spurs championship team. Andrew Gaze, a 15-time Australian League All-Star, played 19 games with the Spurs in 1999. Mills has won the Gaze Medal as Australian Basketballs Male International Player of the Year.
#8
Patty Mills was an Australian Rules Football star in his youth, named the tournament’s best and fairest player at the at the 2004 Under-16 National Championships.
#9
Dewayne Dedmon did not begin playing basketball until he turned 18 in his senior year of high school.
#10
Livio Jean-Charles’ boss before this season was Tony Parker. Jean-Charles played for the French team ASVEL for five seasons, a team owned by Parker. The team won the French Pro A championship in 2015-16.
#11
LaMarcus Aldridge is one of only four players in the league to be named to the All-NBA Team in each of the last three seasons (2014-16), along with LeBron James, Stephen Curry and Chris Paul
#12
When Spurs assistant Ettore Messina was head coach of Italian team Kinder Bologna in 2000, he signed a 21-year-old Argentinian player named Manu Ginobili.
#13
Jonathon Simmons nearly quit playing professional basketball before he attended an open tryout for the Austin Spurs in September 2013 and made the team.
#14
Spurs rookie Dejounte Murray attended Rainier Beach High School in Seattle, which also counts Jamal Crawford, Nate Robinson and Doug Christie among its NBA alumni.
#15
David Lee’s grandfather Des Lee started a company that made and sold a pants creaser and hanger. The company sold to what is now Newell Rubbermaid, and Des Lee focused on philanthropy, donating more than $70 million in his lifetime.
#16
Davis Bertans’ older brother Dairis is also a professional basketball player and played with the Spurs in the 2015 NBA Summer League.
#17
Kawhi Leonard won 41 playoff games in 58 appearances before his 23rd birthday, which ranks second all-time behind Kobe Bryant (42 wins).
#18
Kyle Anderson went 65-0 in his final two seasons of high school basketball at St. Anthony in New Jersey playing for coach Bob Hurley.
#19
Danny Green is one of three North Carolina Tar Heels to win both an NCAA Championship and NBA Championship. The other two are Michael Jordan and James Worthy.
#20
Tony Parker is the all-time leading scorer in EuroBasket, the biennial tournament among Europe’s 24 countries. Parker has 1,104 points scored, while Pau Gasol is third with 1,044 points.
