George Hill was happy with his purchase.

Hill was in the Spurs locker room several years ago, back when he still played for the team, extolling the virtues of the new, mystical ion bracelet he had strapped to his wrist.

The young point guard swore it gave him more energy and a more restful night’s sleep and improved his strength and flexibility.

Listening to this snake-oil sales pitch from his locker a few stalls down, Manu Ginobili barely looked up from tying his shoes.

“Hey George,” Ginobili said, preparing to needle a teammate in his third language, “have you ever heard the word ‘placebo?’”

The Argentine guard was up and on his way to the court to warm up before he could catch Hill’s answer: “Uh, no. What’s that?”

In that moment are two things to admire about Ginobili — 1. his sense of humor and 2. a better mastery of the English language than many native speakers.

On and off the court, Ginobili remains one of the most unique players in NBA history. In honor of that, here are 38 more things to admire about him — bringing the list to an even 40, to match his age:

3. He was asleep when the Spurs drafted him. Then a fringe player in Argentina, Ginobili was so sure no NBA team would touch him in the 1999 draft that he didn’t bother to pay attention to it. He was asleep before a game in the middle of the Brazilian Amazon. An assistant coach on his Argentina national team had to wake him to give him the news.

He had been selected 57th overall by the defending champion Spurs.

“Someone woke me up in the middle of the night to tell me,” Ginobili recalled a few years ago. “I said, ‘They’re the defending NBA champions. Are you sure?’”

4. He changed the NBA draft forever. Not long after his arrival stateside in 2002-03, Ginobili blossomed into the kind of star who can change a franchise. The Spurs got him late in the second round. He wasn’t the first international player to make a splash stateside, but he helped open the doors to an overseas invasion that continues to this day.

5. He is a master exterminator. In a career that is a lock to land him in the Naismith Hall of Fame, the iconic Ginobili highlight had nothing to do with basketball. On Halloween night 2009, the Spurs’ game against the AT&T Center with Sacramento was interrupted by a Mexican free tail bat making repeated sorties toward the court. Impatient to resume play, Ginobili sized up the offending rodent and — using his left hand as a sort of bat swatter — knocked it into oblivion. Problem solved.

Of course, another problem was also created. Since the bat couldn’t be located after the game, Ginobili had to get a round of 16 rabies shots as a precaution.

6. He literally took one for the team. In a February 2016 game against New Orleans, Ginobili took a knee to the groin while attempting to draw a charge from Ryan Anderson. The resulting testicular surgery cost Ginobili a month of the season — and one of his prized jewels.

“I gave my right one for the Spurs,” Ginobili told WOAI-TV a few months later. “I can say it. It’s true.”

7. He is the ultimate champion. Ginobili’s teams have won 11 championships at different levels, beginning with the 2001 Italian League title through the 2014 NBA crown.

Spurs coach Gregg Popovich compares Ginobili to some of the NBA’s all-time greats in terms of sheer will and competitiveness.

“He’s not a normal human,” Popovich said. “There’s something inside of there that the rest of us don’t have. He’s a fierce, fierce competitor. Those guys are few and far between.”

8. He is the Michael Jordan of Argentina. Ginobili’s home country has produced 12 other NBA players. Like Jordan in the U.S., it will take some doing to unseat Ginobili at the greatest of all-time in his homeland. His role in ringleading the plucky Argentines to a 2004 Olympic gold medal in Athens — upsetting a U.S. Dream Team along the way — sealed that.

9. The 2005 NBA Finals. In a sense, this was Ginobili’s U.S. coming-out party. By his third season, most Spurs fans had become accustomed to Ginobili’s fiery and acrobatic brand of play. The rest of America had not. Ginobili averaged 18.7 points, four assists and 5.9 rebounds in the seven-game series victory over Detroit. He came within one vote of supplanting Duncan as the Finals MVP.

10. The trick shots. Anybody with a wifi connection and access to YouTube can pull up highlight reels filled with unorthodox Ginobili shots in games over the years. For his best trick shot artistry, one had to attend the occasional road shootaround the Spurs would hold in various high school gyms. In the smaller confines, Ginobili would often spend the minutes after practice working out the angles he needed to throw, bounce or kick the ball off a wall, rafter or support beam and make it go in the net. More often than not, he wouldn’t leave until he was successful. Probably a top-5 H-O-R-S-E player all-time.

11. The slick passes. Speaking of angles, Ginobili is renowned for finding them in passing lanes. He is not above daring a cross-court bounce pass or a quick behind-the-back job. He practically invented the “nutmeg,” in which he threads the ball through his defender’s legs to an open teammate. He pulled one on former Spur David West in last season’s Western Conference finals.

“When I saw him in that position,” Ginobili said, explaining his thought process, “I just went for it.”

That’s as apt a summation of Ginobili’s career as any.

12. He once had long hair. Ginobili’s long, flowing locks were emblematic of his 2005 NBA Finals run. He was practically Fabio with a jump shot.

13. He doesn’t anymore. Ginobili’s bald spot — which teammate Brent Barry once dubbed “The Argentine island” — began to develop not long after. He’s got a shaved pate now, and rocks it well.

14. He is one-third of the Big Three, for crying out loud. Together with Tim Duncan and Tony Parker, Ginobili is part of the winngest trio in NBA history. No threesome played more games together. They are, in a word, iconic.

15. His Sixth Man sacrifice. During his prime, Ginobili was good enough to start for any team in the NBA. Popovich brought him off the bench, one of the first coaches to put a star in the sixth man role. Ginobili accepted the move with class, even if he preferred to start. When Ginobili’s selflessness was honored with the 2008 NBA Sixth Man of the Year award, Popovich suggested a special storage spot for the trophy. “He probably wants to take it,” Popovich said then, “and shove it up my (bleep).”

16. His Magic Johnson Award snub. Ginobili won championships, the aforementioned Sixth Man award and made a pair of All-Star teams. The one bauble he never earned — and one imminently deserved — was the Magic Johnson Award from the Professional Basketball Writers Association. That award is meant to recognize a star-level player whose cooperation with the media deserves mention. Ginobili is that. Win or lose — a 2013 NBA Finals Game 7 loss or 2014 NBA Finals Game 5 win — Ginobili is in front of the cameras, patiently answering question after question. Often, he will then turn around and answer them all again in Spanish.

17. His intellectual curiosity. There are probably other NBA players who fan-boy out over Neil deGrasse Tyson or Elon Musk. The overlap in that Venn diagram, however, is bound to be but a sliver.

18. His commitment to language. Ginobili’s native language is Spanish. He picked up Italian while playing in Italy before his NBA career took off. His commitment to his third language, English, is remarkable. In interviews, Ginobili is not content to give simple answers using rudimentary vocabulary. He wants to speak English with the same broad palate he uses in other tongues. This can lead Ginobili to ask questions of native speakers, to make sure he is using words correctly. For instance: After dropping the word “cocky” in a postgame interview several seasons ago, Ginobili pulled an American reporter aside to assure himself that he had not just accidentally used a curse word.

19. His cool nickname. It’s been more than a decade since Barry bestowed Ginobili with perhaps the most accurate alternate moniker in league history — El Contusion. It honors a player who has played through more bumps and bruises than perhaps anyone else in league annals.

20. His acting chops. Just check out those H-E-B commercials.

21. His connection to fans. Ginobili is often in demand at arenas across the league, especially from Argentines who have traveled from South America to see him play. Ginobili’s patience with awestruck admirers is legendary. Several years ago in Sacramento, he stayed late into the night to meet with 40 Argentine fans who had driven up from their winter jobs at the ski resorts in Lake Tahoe. Usually, every one of them leaves with an autograph or picture, a smile or a story.

22. He (more or less) invented the Eurostep. It’s a favored move by most every wing player in the NBA now — and even some of the more agile big men — but before Ginobili started Euro-stepping all over the place, it was hardly a league staple. Ginobili popularized the Eurostep the way Wilt Chamberlain popularized the slam dunk.

23. His dunk on Chris Bosh. Ginobili was 36 and already considered over the hill in 2014 when he punctuated the Spurs’ title-clinching Game 5 victory against Miami with a driving slam on Chris Bosh. A month later, it was revealed Ginobili had been playing with a stress fracture in his leg.

24. His commitment to family. Ginobili spends vacations and downtime with his wife Many and their three sons, usually on a beach somewhere. During home games, Ginobili makes time after his pregame warm-up to sit on the bench with his kids, sometimes passing the ball back and forth with them or showing them how to mimic, say, Stephen Curry’s shooting stroke.

25. He lets his kids troll him. In a recent Twitter post, Ginobili recently revealed a list of his 3-year-old son Luca’s top 5 NBA players. Luca’s old man was not on it.

26. He is a math nerd. If basketball hadn’t worked out for him, Ginobili says he would have wanted to be a math teacher. He is known to drop mathematical concepts such as “regression to the mean” into commonplace basketball discussion.

28. He isn’t above a little superstition. Just after the arena public address man announces the Spurs’ arrival to the court, Ginobili jumps and taps the bottom corner of the backboard for good luck. He has done this for 16 seasons.

29. His otherworldly flexibility. Even at age 40, Ginobili can touch his toes to his forehead. Only infants are supposed to be able to do that. Occasionally, teammates will try to mimic Ginobili’s pregame stretching routine, and hilarity ensues.

30. He is a stereotypical tourist. No matter where the Spurs travel — from Los Angeles to Chicago to New York and points in between — Ginobili is the player most likely to do something touristy. He’s been to all the museums and monuments, as well as natural wonders like Multnomah Falls outside of Portland. When the team had a day off in L.A. earlier this season, Ginobili led a group to visit SpaceX, Musk’s private aerospace manufacturer a few miles away.

31. He is at least partially responsible for Popovich’s hair going white. Especially early in his career, Ginobili’s flair for the daring led him to walk a fine line between making spectacular plays and committing spectacular errors. At times, his Pistol Pete-style passes were as likely to wind up in the third row as a cutting teammate’s hands for a layup.

“He would do some things that I thought were unnecessary,” Popovich said a few years ago, “until he came to me and said, ‘I am Manu. This is what I do.’”

32. His running dunk contest with Boris Diaw. When the two (mostly) earthbound veterans were teammates on the Spurs, they began tallying dunks throughout the season. The numbers did not get high. With Diaw playing overseas in France to start this season, the contest continued over Twitter. Ginobili called it off after logging his fifth dunk of the season in January. “I think he’s out of the competition,” Ginobili said.

33. His concept of friendship. Ginobili remains close to many former teammates, including Diaw and Tiago Splitter. He shares a brotherhood with fellow members of the Argentine national team that won Olympic gold in 2004, the so-called “Golden Generation.” Whenever Luis Scola, Fabricio Oberto, Andres Nocioni, Carlos Delfino or Pablo Prigioni are in town, Ginobili treats them to a steak dinner. When Oberto had to undergo a heart procedure during his Spurs career, Ginobili accompanied his friend to the Austin Heart Hospital for support.

34. He is a part-time sportswriter. Ginobili likes to keep fans in Argentina informed of his comings and goings. He does so by penning an occasional column for La Nacion, a newspaper in Buenos Aires. This became particularly useful in January, when he had to explain to folks back home why a convoluted voting formula kept him out of the NBA All-Star game despite overwhelming fan support. “I did not deserve to be,” he wrote in Spanish. “It’s a show for players who have a better present than mine.”

35. His block on James Harden. It isn’t surprising that one of the Spurs’ most iconic players should have made many of their most iconic plays. His coming-from-behind swat of Houston’s James Harden sealed Game 5 for the Spurs in last season’s Western Conference semifinals, all but won them the series and became the stuff of Internet memes everywhere.

36. He was a YouTube sensation before YouTube was invented. Ginobili has played so long, and adapted his game as he has grown older, it can be easy to forget the absurdity of his younger-years highlights. Do yourself a favor and do a Google search sometime.

37. His diet. In and productive into his 40s, Ginobili has had to alter his diet through the years. Gone are the huge plates of pasta he once used to carbo-load on game days. In order to remain healthy he replaced those with lean meats and vegetables. His most difficult omission: alfajores, an Argentine cookie that used to be his favorite.

38. He’s still going. Only one player in the NBA this season is older than Ginobili — Sacramento’s Vince Carter. His 22 double-digit scoring nights this season are the most off the bench for a 40-year-old in league history.

39. He makes Gregg Popovich wistful. “I try to touch him before every game and remember what he’s meant to us over the years and how significant a factor he’s been in our success,” Popovich said before a game earlier this year in Toronto. “I think I’m enjoying him more than ever because I feel like I’m about to lose him.”

40. “He’s Manu Ginobili.” That was Popovich’s three-word answer to a sideline reporter’s question during a 2011 playoff game. We’ll let that be the last word here.