NBA WESTERN CONFERENCE FINALS: SPURS v SUNS

May 24, 2005

Gregg Popovich

COACH POPOVICH: It was a great game both ways obviously. Two teams that played as hard as they possibly could and we feel very, very fortunate to have come out with a win. We got a couple of shots to go down, down the stretch. And it's the way the game goes sometimes.

Amare (Stoudemire) and somebody else had a couple right at the rim, they just didn't drop and we made a couple that ended up maybe being the difference at the very end. But both teams played great and it was anybody's win. We feel very fortunate.

COACH POPOVICH: He obviously had a slow first half. I think he had 5 points at half. Of those I think one was a field goal, so he's our guy. The ball is going to go through him. Sometimes it's going to be Tony (Parker) and Manu (Ginobili). We just figured we better roll the ball if we're going to have a chance to win tonight. Even though he had the four fouls, we stuck him in there earlier in the third quarter than we normally would have. He was smart enough to hang in there foul-wise. He really played with a lot of poise tonight.

COACH POPOVICH: They have done a good job getting into sets, knowing what we want to do, who we want to go to and also who else might be available on the court at the same time because, you know, you got to get rid of it sometimes, in the crowd. Sometimes we'll make that mistake, but we're learning and getting better in that regard. They did have good poise and pretty good execution down the stretch, timeouts and in the half court. Again, we're just fortunate because we made a couple of shots.

COACH POPOVICH: It was huge. It's what he does and we will often run things for him to shoot that shot. He's not a post-up guy per se, he's a 3-point shooter, and he loves doing it. He's confident with it and he did it again.

COACH POPOVICH: Yes.

COACH POPOVICH: Believe it or not, it was one -- it was an aberration but this one did go correctly. Of course it doesn't happen all the time. That's for sure.

COACH POPOVICH: We did try to double him a little bit tonight and it was just awful. They scored almost every single time on it honestly. It was just awful so we got away from it.

COACH POPOVICH: That's a great question. I don't think much has changed. We're the same team doing, you know, what we do. I just think -- when one team wins I think people are too ready to think they must be doing everything really well, and the other team, they didn't do this or that. It's a 3-point game, so we didn't play that much better than they did and they didn't play that much worse than we did. That's why it's a game.

COACH POPOVICH: He's a smart player. It's great to have him out there. Nazr Mohammed has been playing great for us. But down the stretch in fourth quarters he knows what is going on at the defensive end, the offensive end, little things like you just mentioned, taking a charge, getting offensive board, it's not just shooting the 3. He's a smart guy. Tim (Duncan) really enjoys playing with him out there. He helps Tim be a smarter player too because of his experience.

COACH POPOVICH: We decided that we wanted to go to him. We have been going to Tim (Duncan) and Manu (Ginobili). We tried to go back and forth, and Manu is a better free throw shooter than Tim, so we didn't want to keep going to him. Manu had a pretty good rest. We got him down on the bench for a while. I was afraid I wasn't going to get him back in, that I might have to waste a timeout if there was no stoppage of play. We wanted to get him in a little quicker than we did. Once he was in, I thought he was fresh. And after the 3 we thought we better go to him because either him making a great play or going to the line would maybe be a great thing.

COACH POPOVICH: I thought you were going to say something like how can you feel good about your defense and don't you feel that this is like the worst performance --

COACH POPOVICH: (Laughs.) Good one. We stunk on D. Is that fair? We didn't do very well on defense. Part of the reason is because Steve (Nash) is the M.V.P. of the league and Amare (Stoudemire) is unstoppable. What did he get tonight?

COACH POPOVICH: See, we did a job on him. That's two points below his average against the Spurs. So those guys, we just -- they are too darn good and our defense isn't as good as those two guys are. Best answer I can give you.

COACH POPOVICH: Well, I think the thing that Mike is going to go back and think is that they can score on us basically at will and I don't know what else he's going to get from that except he scored at will. We scored a couple more. Lucky.