NBA FINALS: PISTONS v LAKERS

June 8, 2004

Phil Jackson

COACH PHIL JACKSON: The need for a basketball team to be able to function on the floor without looking over their shoulder at the coach to make calls or set up offensive sets for them seemed to be the problem that the Bulls needed to solve during the late '80s. A lot of the things that they ran were features for Michael Jordan, obviously, he's a great player, averaging 38, 37 points in the couple years I was there as an assistant. But a lot of pressure from the Pistons, particularly was capable of taking the team out of their offensive sets and breaking down the team, and the system of offense seemed to be the calls, so that they could generate some offense off the floor from various positions the ball would be on the court without calls, and the need for automatics. In other words, the pressure is very important, also that's what we tried to teach that team. The second part of that, Kobe's function in this offense has been a varied role from a lead guard or initiator off-guard. Last year he was initiator or lead guard a lot of times in the offense and he expended an awful lot of energy putting the ball into play and took off a great load on the offensive end. At one point in the season I think he scored in 11 or 13 games, over 30 points a game. I don't know how exact his role is at that particular level and I thought it took a lot out of him in the course of the year. We wanted him to try to take a lead position in that, so Kobe has played off-guard most of the year.

COACH PHIL JACKSON: Well, you know, obviously we need their offense. Karl has a lot of opportunities out there and he's a valuable part of this team this year and played a lot of minutes, heavy minutes in the playoffs. So we'll see how he reacts, how he moves, his ability to react to the ball, and also his willingness to shoot. With Derek, I think it's mostly he'll get through picks and slides, the problems with his knees, it's a little different on the defensive end.

COACH PHIL JACKSON: Both of them came in and tried to participate in the shootaround, iced and participated and re-iced and that was it.

COACH PHIL JACKSON: Outside of Derek off the bench, a reliable performer from that position, we've had varied performance in a lot of kids on the bench, very young. We have Kareem, who is in his second year, a couple of rookies that have played for us, Stanislav Medvedenko, who has had a role and played very well as a starter this year and gone back to the bench. We really have not had a consistent performance off the bench from any particular guy behind Derek. So we think that that's one of the areas we have to step up particularly in this game.

COACH PHIL JACKSON: Well, they didn't have to do much in the first game, although, they played well. You know, Rasheed didn't have to really participate that much in the offense; took four shots, made 14 points. You know, they had limited involvement with Hamilton as far as the scoring, leading scorer with the team. They were able to have a break with a couple of their players that are really productive players with him so we have not seen the full retinue of what they can do and their arsenal I think is still a bit hidden. We did see the screen roll, their continuity offense, some of the things they do against pressure, and what they attempt to do in rotation as far as coming out, playing us with varied people off the bench, coming in to relieve their starters. There's enough out there to know that some of the tempo of the game, how we can play, I think there's some familiarity.

COACH PHIL JACKSON: Well, those games were entirely different than this game. Obviously, the '91 game against the Lakers, Sam Perkins, the 3-point shot with five, six seconds left on the clock, he took the shot. We had a shot to win it with Jordan's shots coming out. In the game here against the 76ers coached by Brown, we had an overtime situation where we actually reclaimed the lead after being down by 14 points and then lost it in overtime. This game was a disheartening finish. They finished us going away basically. They held us off. We got it to six, seven in the last five minutes and they continued to score and we didn't have an answer for them. So, there was no competitiveness in which we could say, well, we almost had the game and we did some things wrong. We were soundly defeated in this ballgame, and that's the reason why I was upset about their performance. I think that we are going to come back and play much better tonight, and find a way to get this game competitive.

COACH PHIL JACKSON: At the end of the first half, we had an opportunity to stretch a lead, a very short lead and made two turnovers that gave us a poor finish to the half and that's one of the things we thought we could try to finish the half with some momentum, lost it but still had a lead. We went in, came back out without that energy and we've played great third quarters, of course, in the playoffs, it's been one of the trademarks of this basketball club; that I've always harped on the third quarter, comeback and reignite the game, start the momentum again, and we didn't. They were the initiators in the third quarter and they got off to a lead and they stayed with that, with a three-point shot by Wallace to start it off. Our situation, went to Shaq, he had an easy shot, missed it, came back down and got a turnover and such was it; that they had the lead from the beginning to the end of that half.

COACH PHIL JACKSON: No. She free-lanced on it. (Laughter).

COACH PHIL JACKSON: No.

COACH PHIL JACKSON: I expect we will have a change. We're going to start out and see where we go from there in our matchups that we have. We're more than likely going to make some switches in the course of the game, and change some people around. We like what Kobe did with Hamilton, yet we don't want to take away from his offensive game.

COACH PHIL JACKSON: Not particularly, but that's one of the reasons.