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NBA PLAYOFFS ROUND ONE: SPURS v CLIPPERSMay 2, 2015Gregg PopovichLOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA: Game Seven Clippers – 111 Q. Was there anything that‑‑ any point at which it turned? What do you say when a series goes that long and comes down to one play? GREGG POPOVICH: I say darn it. We'll wait for some people to come, otherwise I'll have to say it over again. Let me say something first. I usually don't do that. But kudos, congratulations, everything, to the Clippers. Doc and his staff, players, great series, really played well. Both teams played with class. There was no baloney going on out on the court except for me fouling Jordan, I guess. But other than that, both teams competed their butts off. It was great stuff, a great series, so congratulations to them.  I'm really happy for them. Sad for us obviously for a lot of reasons, but really happy for that group. They're trying to get it going, and they're obviously going in the right direction. Q. On that final play it looked like you wanted three shooters in the corners to lop one up to Kawhi. I know you were upset by the buzzer that went off. Do you feel like you got a chance to see what you were intending there? GREGG POPOVICH: Absolutely. Q. Did you feel like you should have gotten a chance to have another time‑out to change things? GREGG POPOVICH: There's not a whole lot you can do with one second. They had seen part of the play. It was going to be tough anyway. Q. Have you lost a series where it felt like your team did so many things to win a series? GREGG POPOVICH: You know, that's a great question. I'm sure there's an exception, but usually in the past, if we've won a series, we've pretty much won it hands down, or if we got beat, we got beat pretty easily. This was a grind every‑‑ well, six of the seven games were a grind. It was a little different in that way, but it was a great series, a great series. Q. You said before that guarding Chris Paul would be really tough to do, but did you expect Matt Barnes to explode like he did tonight? GREGG POPOVICH: You never know in the Playoffs. Other people step up and do a good job and Matt had a good game. He did a good job, knocked down some shots, got some loose balls. That was the biggest play of the game for us, I think. We were up five and we got a stop. It was a loose ball and we had our hands on it and we didn't grab it, and that was a chance to go up seven or eight, that was late in the game, a little bit later than mid‑fourth quarter. That was huge. From there on it was tit or that and Chris made a good shot. Q. Chris Paul was hampered with his hamstring. How were you trying to take advantage of that? GREGG POPOVICH: Well, everybody is dinged up and nicked up. We tried to get Tony to get in some positions where he could be aggressive, but that's what we do with Tony anyway. I don't know what else to tell you. I don't know how‑‑ I hope he's not hurt. Q. Have you ever seen someone come back from a mid‑game injury like that and play as well as Chris Paul did today? GREGG POPOVICH: I don't know what his injury was, so who knows? It could have been major, or it could have been slight. I don't know. Q. At what point do you get together with everyone and have your talks and decide where you're going next? GREGG POPOVICH: What's today, Saturday? Probably Monday. Guys usually want to get it over with, go on their way and do what they do with their families and everything. We'll probably get together on Monday and talk about the future, one‑on‑one with guys, the typical thing after you lose, you know. Either you win it all or‑‑ there's 29 teams that go home, you know. Maybe they never left home. (Laughter.) Some who left home and then they go on vacation, you know what I'm trying to say, whatever. Q. You're not expecting any big decisions? GREGG POPOVICH: Decisions on what? Q. Tim and Manu and their contracts ‑‑ GREGG POPOVICH: Oh no. I mean people ask me about Tim and Manu and myself for the last five years, what we're going to do. It's all psycho babble. I have no clue. We'll probably come back. Paycheck is pretty good. You think I'm lying. Q. I don't know how much you can share, but what did you say to your team when you got to the locker room after the game? GREGG POPOVICH: I just told them I was proud of them. I thought they laid it all on the line. Timmy, again, he's a miracle to me at 39 what he does out there. I've never seen anybody do that at 39, the way he plays at both ends of the court. He's just an ultimate competitor. But I thought everybody did as well as they could. We've had some people who haven't played well in a lot of games, and they came and played tonight. The performances were better. I was happy for them in that regard. But that was about it. It was short and sweet. We're proud of you, and we'll get together. We know how to win, we know how to lose, and we'll go to dinner. Q. I'm curious what you thought of Danny Green's performance defensively tonight. It seemed like he was able to not only guard his man but on weak side stuff. GREGG POPOVICH: He did a great job. The games we've lost, except for tonight. It was a heck of a game. But the games that we've lost we haven't guarded J.J. and Jamal very well. They still got some shots tonight, but we guarded them pretty well. I was real happy with what did. But in the previous games that we've lost, we did not do a good job and that was the difference in the game, so I regret that. Q. As a coach, is it harder to reconcile a series like this where a couple plays may have gone either way, maybe you advance, you said you played really well as opposed to a past series where guys didn't show up and underperformed to your expectations? GREGG POPOVICH: Oh, sure, but if people play hard and they're both competing and executing and you lose, you know, that's life. You've got to be bigger than that loss. If guys didn't perform or weren't giving it or weren't running back on defense or blah blah blah, then you can get after that, probably even curse, which I rarely do. FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports |
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