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Manu Ginobili feels

A freshly shorn Manu Ginobili ambled over to greet an old familiar face with a big smile and cheerfully feigned surprise, asking Mike Monroe of the Express-News, "You haven't retired yet?"

Monroe, missing a beat, replied, "I was gonna ask you the same thing."

The Argentine legend was in a far better mood than when we last saw him, in the visitor's locker room at the Staples Center looking weary, defeated and ready to call it a career.

All it took for a change of heart and perhaps a charge of battery was some time away in his home country relaxing with friends and family and some welcome news that the Spurs had signed a new big man to replace his good friend and former teammate Tiago Splitter.