NBA FINALS: PISTONS v SPURS

June 23, 2005

Bruce Bowen

BRUCE BOWEN: Kid in a candy store. You know, party, party, candy, I'm hyper, I'm energetic, this is a beautiful moment.

BRUCE BOWEN: It does everything for us. I've always said that he's the focus of our offense. He's the foundation here. We understand that, and it was just so unfortunate that -- a lot of the things he's capable of doing, everybody is entitled to their own opinion, but we understood what we had in him. Us being at home, we were more disappointed in not playing our style of basketball. It was little things that we were not doing correct, and against a team like Detroit, you have to do the little things correctly so that you can get a chance to win a game.

BRUCE BOWEN: I think it's infectious, especially as it got the nuts and bolts of the game, you know, it was tight and we were starting to pull away a little bit and you see him get on the floor for a loose ball, that energizes other guys. All it takes is one, it's like a domino effect, somebody starts and another finishes it off.

BRUCE BOWEN: Thank you.

BRUCE BOWEN: Thank you, thank you.

BRUCE BOWEN: Well, I don't think his critics affected him at all. He's a guy that understands that everybody has an opinion and everybody wants to dissect your game when things are not going well for you as a team and he doesn't get caught up in that, his whole thing is, hey, I understand what I have to do, the coaches will let me know what I'm not doing right so that I can do a better job of whatever it is, and he goes out and attacks it after that.

BRUCE BOWEN: My main focus was, hey, I don't want Chauncey to get hot right now. Chauncey, he's able to take over the game at any given moment, and the last game, he had five threes and that was -- that was four too many, if any. So I was just trying to make sure I stayed up with him and, you know, with my length, sometimes it creates problems for guys and I'm long and once he went up in the air and I saw he was committed, it was a chance for me to react and I was just so happy I got the ball.

BRUCE BOWEN: I think it was paying attention to detail. It's not just about me guarding Rip or me guarding Chauncey, it's about our team doing a better job and maybe shifting over a little bit so that we can make it a little more difficult. So me knowing how it is to chase Rip, once I got to Chauncey, I kind of -- I tried to shade in different areas, not whereas he could just blow by me or pull up for a jumpshot but more or less trying to do the things that would help us if there's a guy, a step slow, you know, my shift will help my teammate out.

BRUCE BOWEN: It was for a hot second, during that time I was more or less trying to -- it was just a matter of us taking ourselves out on defense because we're trying to make something happen instead of, you know, staying the course and allowing things to take place, we tried to force it to happen a little bit and we came close to some good skills by Manu, but we didn't get them. It got a little frantic there for a hot second, but guys, we've been together for a long time and we understand that sometimes we make those kind of plays and they are good and sometimes we make those kind of plays and nothing happens with that. It was more or less about us staying focused during that time to continue on with what we do and not take ourselves out of it without making them take us out.

BRUCE BOWEN: Yeah, we went to zone for a hot second, and, you know, it was good for us. It gave us a chance to, you know, give them a different look because they were so used to seeing us in man-to-man, we went to zone, I think it threw them off a little bit, but not too much.