NBA WESTERN CONFERENCE FINALS: SPURS v SUNS

May 23, 2005

Mike D'Antoni

COACH MIKE D'ANTONI: We always make minor adjustments. Obviously the 120 points we need to adjust. They did a great job, and some of the stuff that you can control and some of it you can't. We'll try to work on the stuff that we can control and just try to get a little bit better, but not a lot of adjustment. Play a little harder and be a little bit more tighter on our schemes.

COACH MIKE D'ANTONI: It goes day-to-day. I can't -- he played really well and we lost. So you have to keep a balance. We're not going to throw over what we did for 62 wins or whatever, but at the same time we're going to use Steven. He did as good a job as anybody can do on Duncan, so, it's a balancing act that we try to walk during the game and we will see how the game goes.

COACH MIKE D'ANTONI: It's funny, we don't blow that by in the sense that people -- Amare had nine points against Memphis, okay, what are you going to do to get Marion back? Well, you know, Marion comes back with 35 or whatever. We didn't do anything different. Shawn Marion got three or whatever he got yesterday. We're not going to do anything different. If they want to take that away, then Amare will have to get 50 or 40, so we're going to take what the other team gives us. We're going to roll a little bit harder, try to get more fast-break points and try to get some more deflections so we can score some easy buckets. But the bottom line is 114 points, 49 percent shooting against San Antonio Spurs. We're not touching that a whole lot. We don't want to say, okay, that didn't work. That worked. Our defense didn't work.

COACH MIKE D'ANTONI: They are a great team. For us to win we're going to have to hit on all cylinders. We didn't do that, especially in the first quarter. I thought that's when we came out a little flat. We just didn't run. Then after that we picked it up. We had a chance to win and we didn't close it out. But, hey, give them credit. They hit like 15 out of 18 last shots and hit 8 straight at one point. So we do want to keep it consistent after 48 -- I think we'll have more of a pop in our game. Maybe they will also, but we'll get back to running a little bit more and try to close them out.

COACH MIKE D'ANTONI: Again, we shoot 57 percent in the fourth or 60 percent and we got outshot. That kind of -- that's not a good night. So, yeah, we have got to do a better job defending and they have to do a worse job of shooting. They made some incredible shots. They are great for a reason. We're going have to have to try and battle that.

COACH MIKE D'ANTONI: I think that first quarter kind of doomed us. There was some little stuff that we didn't do. Against a team like San Antonio, it can't be one time you don't have a pursuit of a ball, can't be one time that I forget to go to the rebound. That's the stuff you can control. You can't control Tim Duncan sometimes and him kicking out the 3-point shooters and then shooting five feet behind the line. You can't control that, but we can control the other stuff enough to give you a chance to win.

COACH MIKE D'ANTONI: Yeah, he's really slow (laughs). I didn't see it. Maybe it is a matter of slow, but I thought he was pretty quick.

COACH MIKE D'ANTONI: Oh, yeah, they run more than most people think. I know we did a pretty good job of getting back actually, only had 6 fast-break points. But, yeah, they can run. We have got to be careful with them because they can get up-and-down.

COACH MIKE D'ANTONI: They did that in the fourth quarter. We only shoot 58 percent and scored 33 points. It's hard to talk about what we didn't do offensively, because we have different numbers. Again, it's like Steve getting 48 and Amare getting 15. What are you going to do to combat that? Nothing. So Shawn getting three and teams scoring 114, what are you going to do? Nothing. We're going to play basketball. We're going to get better defensively and running and we're going to get better at getting loose balls and that stuff. That's where you win or lose.

COACH MIKE D'ANTONI: I don't know. We're going to get better at this. Hopefully we'll get better Tuesday on it. But this is the way we have decided to go as a franchise until I get my notice -- (laughs) I will chain myself to the desk for a while. That's the way we're going to go. A lot of it depends on your personnel.

COACH MIKE D'ANTONI: Makes it a lot easier when you have the best athletes in the country. It made it a lot easier for us, if Brian wants to go this way, and so this is the way we're going to do it. Me personally, I love it.

COACH MIKE D'ANTONI: No, I am not surprised. He's unbelievable.