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NBA PLAYOFFS ROUND ONE: SPURS v CLIPPERSApril 19, 2015Doc RiversLOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA: Game One Clippers – 107 DOC RIVERS: Some nights they'll play great and on nights they don't, you just hope someone else does for you. They had it going. We saw that, and we kind of rode it. Q. Doc, can you talk about the play Matt Barnes had with Baynes. DOC RIVERS: Well, I just thought it was two guys. I think we should give Baynes credit, too. It was two guys that, I don't know, maybe they thought it was a fumble and if you catch the ball you've got possession. I didn't know what was going on there. I liked them both. Neither one of them was dirty, they just held onto the ball and neither one of them wanted to let go. They were having a man contest there, and I thought it was pretty interesting. It was nice. Any of those plays when you're at home gets the crowd into the game and the energy‑‑ it gives you energy. Q. Do you still get in awe of Blake's dunks? DOC RIVERS: No. You know, I miss half of them. Once you see him drive, I'm already looking down to see who's getting back on defense half the time. But I felt in the first half he got to the basket and missed some shots that he could make, and you know, I thought the adjustments in the second half, we went straight line. He wasn't trying to use the glass. He was just attacking. Q. How did you like the way you guys responded? You guys had an 18‑point lead, 17‑point lead, they got it down to nine and you guys come out of a time‑out in a 7‑0 run. DOC RIVERS: That's going to happen through the series. You have two very good teams, and there is no lead safe with either team, and that's how‑‑ one of the things we talked about coming into this series, we were going to have to have great resolve. They're going to make plays. They're going to make runs, they're going to make shots. They're going to go on stretches where the ball is moving and they have you spinning around, and you just have to take the ball out and run it back and see if you can score back. Q. I thought tonight's Clipper crowd may be the loudest I've ever heard here. Can you talk about that?. DOC RIVERS: You're including everybody or just our team? I'm just joking. It was awesome. I agree. I thought it was better than the Golden State game last year. They had energy, and they had energy throughout. It's amazing, and you know this, you've been around longer than me, that your team needs energy sometimes from your crowd. I thought they did that for us tonight. Q. Did Chris just seem to have that look of determination like he was just going to play this game the way he can ‑‑ DOC RIVERS: I don't know, he was making shots. He put a lot of pressure on the defense, and what makes Chris and Parker both so good is if you try to take away their shots, then they beat you with the pass. If you try to take away their passes they can beat you with the shot. That's what makes them both very good players, or great players. Q. Could you talk about the defense tonight because just watching, it seemed the rotation worked well. Guys were moving, and although they had a bad night shooting, I think a lot of it has to be attributed to the fact that the Clippers played good defense. DOC RIVERS: We really did. We had a good defensive night, but we had a lot of mistakes, and with a good defensive night because they missed some shots, and some of those shots should have been defended. So I can't wait actually to watch the film to see it and then I can't wait for us to see our film because my belief is we won tonight because we just had more energy. For us to win on Wednesday night, we're going to have to play better, and we're going to have to execute better defensively. Q. Much of the talk was about you guys facing the defending champs. What do you say about what you learned about your club tonight? DOC RIVERS: I don't know if I learned anything. They're still the defending champs and they're going to be the defending champs every night. We have a lot of confidence in our team, but you just have to stay humble and respect who you're playing. They're a heck of a basketball team. We won one game. Q. You kind of touched on it about defensively on Wednesday, but playoff series are about adjustments. What adjustments do you need to make now to do this three more times? DOC RIVERS: I'll let you know. I don't know if we have to make adjustments. We have to do a better job of what we were supposed to do. We got away with stuff, and I didn't like visually seeing that. We'll see that‑‑ we'll have to fix it. Q. You started the second quarter with a five‑man bench unit and didn't fare particularly well. Was that partially because of the foul trouble? DOC RIVERS: Well, foul trouble. We had a lead, and honestly they didn't get stops really is what hurt them. The one stretch the two minutes before, because they were in before, they actually extended the lead and then they lost it all in that one stretch. I thought that was more confidence than who they are. I thought when they made a couple shots, we stopped playing at pace offensively. That's something I think they will see as a group and be able to fix. Q. I know that Matt's play I thought for the jump ball sparked you guys. I also thought Jamal played well and provided a huge spark. DOC RIVERS: Yeah, that was huge for us because with the second unit, we need him. We need him to score, and I thought he put a lot of pressure on their defense. He made shots for us. I thought there was a lot of little moments for us in the game like that. Matt's play, I thought Jamal's making shots in that stretch right before the end of the halftime, I thought Austin and Baby and CP gets a foul, and we have to sit him for the last four minutes of the second quarter, that could have gone bad for us and we actually extended the lead. That's the point I make. The whole bench may not play a ton of minutes, but they're going to have their little parts in this series and in every series we play, and tonight I thought overall we did okay. Q. Once you were able to kind of get away with a lot of those defensive mistakes because DeAndre Jordan cleaned up so many of them at the rim‑‑ DOC RIVERS: He did early. He had a stretch that it was just D.J. being D.J. I don't know what you call it. You don't see it very often because he changed shots, he was fantastic. He even got out to a three and challenged the shot today. He's just so gifted athletically. I hate almost saying that because he's so smart defensively, and I think that's what people miss. Q. In the first half you had foul trouble with DeAndre and Chris. Independent of the bench as a whole, Baby came in and gave you good minutes and then Austin gave you guys good defensive minutes. Is that what you talk about when guys are going to have to step up? DOC RIVERS: Yeah, guys are going to have to play. That stretch with four minutes left, more defensively, it showed us a little bit because I don't know if we've had Austin on Parker at all this year, and he did a terrific job. That helps us know that we can use that. I know Chris was excited about that, as we said at halftime, that you can use that and give him rest more at certain spots. You know, that's what the bench does. They're not going to play their normal 20 minutes or 16 minutes, but they're going to play three minutes at stretches, one guy, and you hope he can make a difference. Q. In the second quarter, hack‑a‑D.J. was enforced. How important was it for your team collectively to stay together through that knowing that it's going to slow down‑‑ DOC RIVERS: They're good. We've seen it all year. I swear, I act like it's not even happening half the time even though I darned know it's happening. They've been pretty good at it. They don't worry about it for the most part. D.J. is starting to split them, which is huge for us. In that stretch we split them and then we got stops, so we actually extending it, which was great. You know, the one thing about Hack‑a‑Jordan or whatever you want to call it ‑‑ I still think it should be called Hack‑a‑Shaq just to give him his due, is it does allow you to set your defense. FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports |
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