NBA FINALS: PISTONS v LAKERS

June 6, 2004

Phil Jackson

COACH PHIL JACKSON: I don't know if it's too passive. I think it was the pace that the Pistons generated during the course of the game. They were very deliberate. This was a team that, you know, brought the ball down with patience and executed what they wanted to do over a course of 24 seconds. They made each possession like a football possession. I started harping on the players a little bit to start building a pace in the middle of the second quarter when I saw that things were getting lethargic. We tried to speed it up a little bit at the end of the second period and got things moving a little bit, but it all worked out I think in their favor. They got a couple of fast breaks at the end of the second period. You could see the pace of that game or the development of the game in the third quarter, we came out flat in the third quarter and they established the lead with a 3-point shot and it was difficult for us to even find a way to get back to match in that quarter.

COACH PHIL JACKSON: Well, they had us on our heels. I thought we did a good job on Hamilton, but Billups had us on our feels, got Payton in foul trouble early and late, and we had a difficult time handling him on the screen rolls. Their step-backs out of situations -- really, the game boiled down to shots that were made under duress at the end of the 24-second clock. We had four of them made in duress under the gun in the end of the 24-second clock, one of them was a three-pointer that, was the difference in the ballgame, literally. Defensively, it was a square-off. They played, I thought, Kobe, great. They had a tough time with Shaquille. They took everybody else out of the ballgame. Their bench beat our bench in this game and we'll have to find a way to help that.

COACH PHIL JACKSON: He has good strength, physical strength, strong shoulders and can clear himself out of pick-and-roll situations. He seemed to handle the pressure well, he identified what he wanted to get on actions that the team was running at that time. And then if things were not going right for the team, pick his own spots.

COACH PHIL JACKSON: I thought he tired somewhat, and, you know, he's working hard in the first half. Our direction was good. I think our execution was good in what we tried to get with ball movement and player movement. The second half, I don't think we worked as hard to execute at the far end of the court. That happens sometimes when they are away from the bench and down there on their own at the other end of the court. I thought just the angles they tried to get the ball into Shaquille were difficult and we didn't find him as often. It was interesting, I think we end up shooting 40-some foul shots in that first half and I think only like six in the second half. It's a very unusual game. Usually it's inverted like that in a ballgame, but this game turned out to be a complete change of pace in change of pace in that way.

COACH PHIL JACKSON: We thought that we would get -- we had to get a different matchup. We were not having success with Devean or Rick at the small forward and Kobe could move over to small forward and Kareem could give us something a little bit different out there. He did, but he wasn't successful at the offensive end. His defense is pretty good. Kobe had a hard time shooting over Prince. I thought individually, that was probably one of the best defensive match-ups they had all night.

COACH PHIL JACKSON: We rarely play a zone. This is too good of a 3-point shooting team to really think about a zone, especially when they have got a guy like Rasheed Wallace that can step out and hit three-point shots. So, you know, we know that zone is going to be very few, very inconsistent for us to play, and we won't be using them too often.

COACH PHIL JACKSON: You know, we had a series in which we had a couple of injuries at the end of the Minnesota series. You know, Karl had his knee aspirated, Fish was not capable of playing, you could see both of them, the lack of practice and lack of activity in this ballgame. There was a little rust on them out there. They will get better as the series goes on.