NBA WESTERN CONFERENCE FINALS: SPURS v SUNS

May 29, 2005

Gregg Popovich

COACH POPOVICH: Robert is a very team-oriented guy. He possesses a lot of experience and he understands the game very well. So he tends to make everybody better at both ends of the court. He did that in Houston. He did it in L.A., and he's done that for us here the two years that he's been here. In all those aspects, that makes him a very valuable individual on a team.

COACH POPOVICH: I think it's very important. We can't take anything for granted. This is a team that's won more games than anybody in the league. They are explosive and they have lost three games. They are going to be very physical. They are going to be trying to do what they did during the year even better, so they are going to be running, they are going to be pushing the ball at us. We have got to be prepared mentally as much as physically. If we think that they are going to lay down, then we're going to have a problem.

COACH POPOVICH: I thought that we let Amare get away from us. He's a great player, but I thought he caught the ball in positions that were really tough to defend too often. And I thought on the offensive end in the half court, we didn't execute very well in the sense that we made short cuts, we hurried, we didn't finish off plays. We set poor picks. I thought the offensive execution was not very good.

COACH POPOVICH: We have got a good young group because of people, you know, like Tony (Duncan) and Manu (Ginobili) and Timmy (Duncan). Timmy is just beginning to reach his prime years, so Nazr (Mohammed) is a young kid, Rasho (Nesterovic) is a young kid, Brent Barry still got good years ahead of him. So I think it's a group that if we can keep them together for a while we can continue to compete at a high level.

COACH POPOVICH: Everybody tries to be careful and everybody tries to design things so that they can have a certain level of talent, but also a certain level of character, stability. And you need some good fortune to go along with it. We have had that. When we drafted Manu (Ginobili) in the 50s, there was nobody in the organization that knew he was going to be as good as he is now. We'll take credit because we drafted him, but we take no credit for how good he is now. So things like that you can't control. Getting Tony Parker at 28, it worked out great, but that's good fortune as much as it is adding two plus two and figuring out it is a very subjective thing. So those things have to happen to you in order to do a great job in the league. It's not just having people around that make good decisions; sometimes they don't work.

COACH POPOVICH: I really am. When you consider what he's done the last couple of years, last couple of summers, then those injuries, I thought it would really limit him because his game isn't based on athleticism. It's based on coordination and fundamentals and timing and all these sorts of things. He can't lose athleticism, what he has. But he's very committed and very focused and basically ignored the papers and what is involved with the ankle to just go play and let him get loose every game.

COACH POPOVICH: No, no, it was late enough in the year where he knows what was at stake and he wasn't going to let anything stand in his way and I didn't talk to him for a second. He's mentally very sound, very motivated, self-motivated individual. When I say things to him, it's far and few between and what he doesn't want is a whole lot of talk. So I try not to do that with him.

COACH POPOVICH: It's a gradual thing. The more you watch the kid play, the more you realize that if you hold him back it's probably going to produce diminished things because his game is playing -- kind of like Nash plays, kind of like Iverson plays, they play with a high level of intensity. They like a little bit of chaos, they compete well in that kind of environment. If you slow them down and just make them conservative, I think you really lose a lot with him.

COACH POPOVICH: I thought that was to me (laughs) -- just to keep me involved, so I thought I was doing something in the game.

COACH POPOVICH: If it was a year and a half ago, I would have pulled a hamstring jumping off the bench trying to get to him first, trying to tell him about that play. And I think I just sat there with my chin on my hand like, oh, well.

COACH POPOVICH: Both. It's pretty obvious after a while that you have got to do that. I had to talk to myself and I got a great staff that told me to sit down and shut up. This is who this kid is. And Timmy (Duncan) helped with that. He would come over and he would pat me on the back like, just go sit over there, it will be okay. We got this. I'd get off the bench like I am going to go -- he'd go, okay, you got it. Timmy would go talk to him and I don't say anything.

COACH POPOVICH: We take credit that we drafted him but not for the fact that he is as good as he is. Nobody can know that.

COACH POPOVICH: Anybody told you that in my office, they are lying to you.

COACH POPOVICH: I saw him in Puerto Rico in a tournament and the first thing you saw was unbelievable competitiveness, for a skinny little thing; getting killed, not caring, coming right back and the next time down the court pulling up and shooting 3. You say, wait a minute, there's ability attached to this kind of competitiveness. He was a young kid and at 50, whatever we were, you are not too excited anyway, so we just thought it was a good idea to start looking at potential kids in Europe that we could just leave over there for a few years, so that's when we drafted Rasho (Nesterovic), and this guy Parker and Beno Udrih and some of those guys.

COACH POPOVICH: Well, we thought about that, and but it's -- we have looked at, you know, veteran backup points for that specific reason, like let's say that I have -- Avery was still playing and Avery was 32 or 33, would he be great to have on your team, Tony comes out of the game and you are saying now watch Avery on this or watch this or that. We just, for whatever reason, money, or we didn't find a guy like that because maybe they are someplace else. Tony just learned on his own, learned from his teammates.