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NBA FINALS: HEAT v SPURSJune 15, 2014Tony ParkerSAN ANTONIO, TEXAS: Gam Five San Antonio Spurs – 104 Q. Tony, do you find it somewhat amazing that the Spurs were able to make a comeback with you missing your first ten shots in the game? TONY PARKER: It was just a weird game for me. But I stuck with it, and the team was playing well, and so I was just trying to find my rhythm while the team was playing good. Finally in the fourth quarter, a breakthrough for me. I made a couple shots and contribute to help the team win. Q. How important was it for Manu to come in and spark the team in the second quarter? TONY PARKER: Yeah, he did a great job. Because you know when you have a big game like that, we had a rough start. LeBron was unbelievable in the first quarter, so we just had a hard time. We knew that was going to happen because we played two great games on the road, so we knew coming in they were going to have a great start, play with a lot of energy. But we stayed together.  We knew it was a long game, and we came back up 7 at halftime. In the second half we played a lot better. Q. Tony, congratulations on the NBA Championship. Your last one Game 7 years ago in 2007. You had a couple of first‑round exits since then, a Finals loss a year ago. Was there ever any doubt that crept in your mind that you could get back to this point? TONY PARKER: No. We always try to compete every year. Pop and R.C., they do a great job to put a team together to try to win a championship. It's been a long time, but it makes it even sweeter. That's why I say it's the sweetest one because it's just unbelievable to win seven years ago and to be so close last year, it was very cruel, but that's the beauty of sport. Sometimes it's tough. And sometimes it can be beautiful like today, because it shows a lot of character of the team to take a loss and to come back the following year and to win the whole thing. Q. How much of a lift did everyone get from Manu's dunk? TONY PARKER: I think he surprised everybody. That was a big dunk. Manu was just in that mode. He was very aggressive and just made one of those plays that we all know that he can do. Q. Will you talk about the play of Patty especially in the third quarter? He came in and just lit it up like he seems to do in pressure situations. TONY PARKER: Yeah, he just caught fire. Sometimes it happens. When you want to win a championship, you know your role players have to play well, and our bench has been playing well the whole season, and Patty came in and made some big shots for us in the third quarter, and then he gave us a good lift to try to keep the lead in the fourth quarter. Q. Kawhi, all year we've been talking about him deferring to you guys and not being aggressive. What you saw from him tonight and him winning the NBA Finals MVP, is he ready now to take this franchise and take it over? TONY PARKER: Yeah, he did a great job in the Finals. He did an unbelievable job. Played great defense on LeBron. I hope you don't put too much pressure on him because he's still got time. We do it as a team and we play together, and Kawhi won that award and it's well deserved. At the same time you have to let him grow. He's only 22. Q. You had spoken about the cruelty in sports and the loss last year. Did you share any moments with Tim after the game where you talked about that or did you get a chance to? TONY PARKER: No, we talked about it's just that it's so sweet to win a championship the way we did it. I would change nothing. It makes it even better the fact that we had to go through that and we had to go through a tough loss in Game 6 and Game 7, and to be able to come back. It just makes the journey even more worth it. It was worth it all the pain and all the hard practices, training camp, to look at it again when we start training camp, look at Game 6, look at Game 7, it was tough. But showed a lot of character, and came back and gave ourselves a great opportunity to win this year, and that's what we did. Q. How much sweeter does it make it not just the win, but the way you guys won it with nine, ten guys contributing top to bottom? TONY PARKER: Yeah, it's great. You said it all then. We're a true team, and everybody contributes. Everybody did their job defensively, offensively. We did it together, and that was the whole key this season. FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports |
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