NBA WESTERN CONFERENCE FINALS: SPURS v SUNS

May 24, 2005

Mike D'Antoni

COACH D'ANTONI: Again I thought we played well enough to win. Obviously we shot the ball well, did things offensively, we could not make a stop on Ginobili, above all in the last 3, 4 minutes. A couple of offensive rebounds they got, they seem like every time they came up with something that we shouldn't have given them they put a dagger in us. 3 points shot and you know, they played Championship basketball. We just lacked a little bit.

COACH D'ANTONI: I know it's obvious, I am going to say this, I really believe it. There's no one in the locker room that don't think we can't go to San Antonio and win. We have a very good record on the road and we can do it. It's the same court up here, we have played them two times we thought down the last three minutes and we played them even or we have been leading going into the fourth quarter. We know it's going to be tough, but four days off we will prepare a little, bit, we will go down and try to get Game 3. We get Game 3 it's a different ballgame.

We'll look at it that way. I do believe my players, the players in the Suns' locker room believe they can get it done.

COACH D'ANTONI: Difference obviously they scored 41 two nights ago, the first game, they scored 31 tonight. We did not make a stop when we had to. That's to their credit you have got to give Ginobili and Duncan always making the right play and decision. I thought we had a couple of good looks a layup and jump shot. We missed; they made. It's pretty simple equation at the end you are a little short.

COACH D'ANTONI: Yeah, I mean, he's what he is. Rolling dice a little bit see if he didn't run out of gas and he might have just a little bit in the middle of the fourth. I had to give him a couple minute blow so he -- he's a gamer. I can't say enough about him -what he has done and what he means to us. If we can get Joe back fairly soon I am not saying Saturday but when he's ready and able to play that will help also Steve. Just a little domino effect. It will help a lot of things.

COACH D'ANTONI: Yeah, that shot didn't hurt us too much? (Laughs) a lot of it experience and being there and understanding a lot of times you have to sample the waters before you jump in. So we're here, but again, we have been resilient, we know we're in a hole, we know what we have to do, we'll go to San Antonio and leave it all on the line on Game 3 we'll see what happens. I don't think there's any doubt that we can win. It's going to be tough because you are playing San Antonio. We can win there just as much as we can win here. That's our game plan. We're going to do. The longer we can extend the series if we can get one, then we have one guy coming back, that's going to help us a lot. We need to get one game down there and we need to get that first one to give us a chance. We're going to go like it's game 7.