NBA FINALS: PISTONS v SPURS

June 9, 2005

Chauncey Billups

CHAUNCEY BILLUPS: I think, you know, early we had it going a little bit. Rasheed was really aggressive to start the game. You know, we love when he's aggressive. We just try to force-feed him. We'll break a play to get it to him anytime because we feel like most of the time, he's going to make good things happen. You know, we got up and got a good lead, and kind of forgot about how we got the lead. Started, you know, breaking plays and going one-on-one. We are really not a one-on-one team. We don't have that kind of personnel to kind of go one-on-one and break people down and get baskets all night. I thought we reverted to that a little bit. But, you know, all of that being said, we had a lead at halftime, and we came out and I thought the first two or three minutes, you know, we played the way we should have, and then after that, we kind of reverted back to some of those bad habits that we had in the first half, and it hurt us.

CHAUNCEY BILLUPS: We do, we have a very good rebounding team, as they do. You know, they killed us on the boards tonight. I think us as guards have to come back in and help, you know, help with the rebounding and get some of those longer rebounds, like I think their guards did. You know, our bigs were in the right positions when a lot of times we got some funny bounces and their guards got them and ours didn't, so I think we've got to help the big guys and try to help rebounding.

CHAUNCEY BILLUPS: I'll talk about the first part. (Laughter). He was good, man, he did what he does. He's a slasher. He can also shoot it. He's an energy guy. I thought he came out and did all of those. You know, did he all of those, that's what they depend on him to do, and he did that against a tough defender like Tayshaun. He's asked to be a slasher because if he's not, Tayshaun is going to knock him and it's going to be difficult for him. But he had it easy. I think we'll try to make it a little tougher on him and not let him get to his sweet spots as easy as we did today.

CHAUNCEY BILLUPS: No comment. No, actually, it was, you know, I thought it was a charge, but it could have really went either way, you know what I mean. It was a great play. But, you know, I thought it was a charge.

CHAUNCEY BILLUPS: Well, I thought we had energy. I thought we had some energy. I thought we failed to, like I said, execute like we should have. I thought -- I don't think they just really outworked us. They outplayed us and outexecuted us in some stretches. In the Finals, in a series this big, with two teams, two very good teams, I think execution is going to be the key. They outexecuted us in a couple of stretches, and that hurt us.