NBA WESTERN CONFERENCE FINALS: SPURS v SUNS

May 23, 2005

Tony Parker

TONY PARKER: It's going to be like the Sampson series. Everybody in Argentina has their hair like that.

TONY PARKER: Well, it's great especially for me. I love to run, it's great. The more we do it the more we feel comfortable, if we can control it, and control the pace, I think we'll be okay.

TONY PARKER: Well, definitely. He's a defensive coach so he doesn't like to see the high scores. But Phoenix has a lot of weapons.

TONY PARKER: Oh, for me it's great. I am loving it. I just play my game and see what happens.

TONY PARKER: (Laughs.) That would be great, but I think I still think defense wins championships, so I play defense too.

TONY PARKER: I hope so (laughter.)

TONY PARKER: I timed it at training camp but I don't remember what my time was. I feel like I am the fastest in the league.

TONY PARKER: I was doing a hustle play. I was waiting to accelerate at the right time.

TONY PARKER: Nash is hard to defend because he's a very good shooter. He's going to find people. He's just -- he's being aggressive now. He's scoring a lot of points too. We just got to try to contain him and make sure we stop the other guys because he's going to score regardless. Him and Stoudemire are going to score. You have to stop the other guys and just contain Stoudemire and Nash.

TONY PARKER: I don't know. I missed, like Jim Jackson, I lost him maybe like two or three times in transition so I am sure we can do a lot better. They scored 114 points so we had to do something wrong. It's going to be harder to slow them down. They are so good on offense but I am sure we can do better, especially transition defense, to try to get to the shooters and Stoudemire too, I thought we lost a couple of times.

TONY PARKER: I don't think it changed something because we know how they are going to play. They have been doing that for the whole season. They are going to run and do a lot of transition stuff and going to score. We just have to make sure that we just get back on defense, same thing like we did against Denver or a couple of years ago in Jersey. Everybody has to get back has to be focused, everybody has to be ready when Manu shoots the ball, me, Bruce, Brent, we all have to go back, whatever happens --

TONY PARKER: Personally I love it. I don't think Pop likes it that much. For me I love it, if we can make sure that we don't get too many turnovers doing that, I think we would be okay. We have to make sure on the road we can't have too many turnovers, we saw what happened against Seattle so we just have to make sure if we're going to go and do that transition we have to make sure it's easy stuff because we can't forget that we have Timmy and it starts with him, you know, inside. I think it's going to help if we can get those easy baskets especially against Phoenix because they are going to score a lot of points.

TONY PARKER: A little bit. I guess Pop is going to adapt a little bit. He just wants to make sure that we don't go crazy.