NBA WESTERN CONFERENCE FINALS: SPURS v SUNS

May 29, 2005

Tim Duncan

TIM DUNCAN: We talked about it yesterday, just we want to finish this thing out. We don't want to give them any hope. We know how good a team they are and we know how their confidence would build with every win we would give them. So we want to close it out now, keep them on their backs and just finish it out.

TIM DUNCAN: No, no, we don't have any of that here. I don't think Pop would allow that. That's probably the best thing we have going for us. We're going to come out with the same intensity we had these first 3 games and hopefully everything goes right and everybody is healthy and we get through this game and get a win.

TIM DUNCAN: Ideally, yeah, but, no, not especially. But a great position to be in here and just going to go out and finish it up the right way.

TIM DUNCAN: We're a very confident team, but we also have a lot of respect for our opponents. I think that keeps us in check. We're not going to get too high where we go out and we play stupid. We understand that we're playing good. We understand the kind of team we're playing against, so we'll continue to play with the high intensity and the high level of respect we have for them.

TIM DUNCAN: I am going to do my part. I am going to do my part. But we have a great group of guys here, guys that have been through it before; guys that have been with us before. And it's everybody's responsibility to come with that same intensity. And being one of the leaders of the team, of course, it is more mine, but I think everybody understands it, everybody will come with that intensity.

TIM DUNCAN: Yeah, it did. As greedy as we are, we still think we did a lot of things wrong. We gave up a couple of things at the rim, a couple of wide-open threes. We still feel we can improve, and that's the kind of game we're going to want to put out there tomorrow, something where we keep them in the 80s and 90s.

TIM DUNCAN: When you are in the midst of everything, you are not really thinking about it. It was great to go into halftime and to hear that we held them for 10 in that quarter. But you are in the midst of things, you are not worrying about it, you are not thinking about it. I love the way we got the stops and were able to push back at them, and that's the kind of balance we want to play. We want to get those stops and we want to be able to push it back up the floor.

TIM DUNCAN: I don't know what I expected out of myself. I just wanted to play to whatever level I could, and help us however I could. And as the games went along and I started to feel more and more healthy, I wanted to do more, I wanted to be more assertive.

TIM DUNCAN: I don't compare things like that. I don't know. This is a great run right now and we would love to win this one tomorrow and win four more. Let's get it done, however it gets done, however it feels. The end result is all that matters.

TIM DUNCAN: You could argue either way. It could help. We have a couple of guys with a couple of injuries that would love that time off to really get to 100%, but we're playing well right now and we feel good right now and to lose that rhythm or lose that time, it could hurt us. But bottom line, we want to finish the series in this next game. However many days or however long it takes to get to that next series, we're going to be where we want to be.

TIM DUNCAN: I think we raised our game to a different level last night. I think we started the game very well. We finished at half incredibly, but we came out with the focus. We knew they would have that intensity and we matched it. We knew that they would have the desire to really try to jump on us and we matched that. So I think we learned a lot from last night and hopefully can build on that.

TIM DUNCAN: Everything we do becomes a chemistry. We have been together for a while now and we have played a lot of games together and we believe in each other, so a lot of that has to do with chemistry.

TIM DUNCAN: I think we have had it happen in years past and we have learned from that. It is impossible to guard against that. Things happen, games happen, but you do what you can to combat that and you hope it doesn't go the wrong way.