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NBA FINALS: HEAT v SPURSJune 15, 2014Manu GinobiliSAN ANTONIO, TEXAS: Gam Five San Antonio Spurs – 104 Q. The offensive foul on Battier and you fell down, that seemed to kind of light a fire. Right after that is when you kind of exploded for the rest of the game. Did that kind of get you motivated a little bit? MANU GINOBILI: I'm not sure it was exactly that. Maybe the next possession, attacking the rim hard and somebody scoring a bucket and feeling the atmosphere getting pumped up, then the dunk, those situations really help out and make you feel better. I'm not sure it was that offensive foul, things that happened. Q. Maybe you could talk a little bit more about the dunk. I think the last time you tried that you strained a hamstring, and tonight obviously pulled it off. Just what got into you tonight I guess? MANU GINOBILI: I know. The last time I tried I got blocked by Caron Butler against OKC badly, and I was made fun of by my teammates in a rough way. They actually made me promise that I wasn't going to try that again, and I said, yes, I won't try that again. But in the heat of the battle with the adrenaline pumping and the situation really, I don't know what happened. I went hard and once I was in the air, I felt like I had a shot, and I tried. I think it helped me, and it helped the team too to get pumped up. Q. How great does it feel right now for you to have redeemed yourself from last year's series to come out here and pretty much seal the deal for your team tonight? MANU GINOBILI: It's so nice. It's hard to explain. I'm not skilled enough to explain properly how we feel. Not only me, I'm pretty sure that Tony, and Tim, and Pop feel the same way. Last year was a tough one for all of us. We felt like we had the trophy, that we were touching it, and it slipped away. It was a tough summer. We all felt guilty. We all felt that we let teammates down. But we work hard. We thought every game in the regular season trying to get better to have the same opportunity again. We got to this spot, and we didn't let it go. As you could see, every game we were up 15, 20, we kept it. No mistakes. Great mentality, and we kept playing until the last minute. So very proud of what we accomplished. We beat an incredible team with incredible players that won twice in a row. So we are all very, very excited and proud of what we accomplished today. Q. How excited are you about Argentina winning today in the World Cup and you winning the championship on the same day? MANU GINOBILI: I'm a little more excited about winning the championship than about Argentina. The fact that the game finished right before our tip‑off, I couldn't even enjoy it or watch it. I was just following a little bit on the phone. Of course as an Argentinian, I think they would take my passport away if I say that I didn't care today, but it was a tough situation, so I was very focused on my task of what I had to do on the court and how I had to play. So from the next game on, I'll be more of a fan than today. Q. Tim Duncan became the first player in three different decades to start for a championship team, and you and Tony and him represent the nucleus of players that last won a title in 2007. What would be the message to, I don't know, any player, any team that thought he was done or people thought they were done? What would you tell them based on all the years that we thought you guys were done? MANU GINOBILI: The truth is that I never really cared what people said about us. I think I said it many times. There was not one season since I'm in the NBA that I really didn't truly believe that we could have won it. Every year we were up there. You know, sometimes we were No. 1 and we lost in the first round. Some other times we were 7th and we had a shot at winning it. But playing with the teammates I've always played, coached by the guy that is coaching us, I always felt that we had a shot, and I truly never believed it was the last shot. Even last year, after that tough blow and that tough series, Game 6 especially, I always believed that we had a shot coming back at this stage. Q. How much sweeter does it make this the way you guys played with the teamwork, the depth, the balance? This is a team that people are holding as a real pinnacle for basketball. What does that mean to you guys? MANU GINOBILI: There were some possessions that I was‑‑ some possessions on the court and seeing what was going on, some others on the bench, and I felt so proud. Sometimes I felt like saying, wow, this is sweet. It was really fun to play like this. It was really fun to watch when I was on the bench. I think we played a really high level. We shared the ball maybe as never before. Seeing how involved and how important everybody that was part of that team felt made it even more special. So, again, really proud of this championship. A lot of things made it sweeter. The fact that it's been seven years, what happened last year, the way we played, many of the guys it was their first time, only Matt, Tim, Tony and me, I think, were a part of this team in '07. So it feels great. Seeing the look on their faces, seeing Kawhi's expression when they called his name for the MVP, a lot of things made it special. So I'm at a real high right now. I feel so happy and lucky to be on this team. Q. Chris Bosh said that this was the best Spurs team that he had played against. In comparison to the other championship teams that you've been on, what are your thoughts? Is this the best team? MANU GINOBILI: Impossible to say. We played at a really high level many years. I think '05 we were really good, '07, too. You know, '07 we won 4‑0 and winning by good margins. I think it could be the team that played the most fun because of the way we moved the ball and the variety of our offense with threes, attacking the rim, now we added some dunks with Kawhi in and out. I think it was really fun to play, but it's hard to compare which team was better. It's been a while. FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports |
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