NBA WESTERN CONFERENCE FINALS: SPURS v SUNS

May 30, 2005

Gregg Popovich

COACH POPOVICH: And of course you want truthful answers.

COACH POPOVICH: You better start taking this more seriously.

COACH POPOVICH: (Laughs.) Sure. Everything goes through your head. Everything in the world goes through their -- you just -- one hopes that the group understands that emotions and confidence levels change during the series. That every game is important in some way, shape or form. We all know that closeout games are the toughest, and I depend on maturity of the group to understand that. I don't think that speeches on my part to let them know what the pitfalls are are very helpful to this particular group. They will either play well or they will play poorly, but it won't be because they took it lightly. If they lose a game, it will because Phoenix played better. Not because they came in tiptoeing and thinking it was over and they are thinking about Detroit or Miami.

COACH POPOVICH: I think no matter what kind of a group you have as far as personality is concerned or character or lack thereof, there are times when their attention needs to refocus when they might be skipping steps or forgetting what they do well; maybe not playing as much team ball as they need to be playing. But with that many games in a season there are periods where I believe I have to step up and say that. Probably once or twice a year.

COACH POPOVICH: I am trying to fight the urge to say that he came all the way from Paris, but I won't do that because that's a long way (laughter). He's (Parker) only 22 as we speak, so he has got a long time left in the league, but his understanding of the game has improved dramatically. As far as the NBA game, there are so many situations, so many possessions, ends of quarters, two for one situations, they made a run, we made a run, miss matches, people can't learn those things immediately and he's steadily gotten better in those areas. And secondly, he's trying to figure out how to be a pointguard. And that's a work-in-progress, but he's better every year. How much better, I don't know, 5%, 10%, 15% better every year. But he's a scoring guard who is trying to become a pointguard but not forget about the scoring part. That's not always easy, but he's doing a good job of it.

COACH POPOVICH: I don't see any reason why they can't. I have said that from the beginning of the season. I am one of the people that thought that they could play the way they are playing and win championships. Lest we forget they are in the Western Conference Finals right now, so they have vanquished many foes during the year. They had the best record in the league and they didn't stumble in the playoffs thus far. So, they are playing the same basketball, to answer that question. And it's not like we have gone out and beaten them by 15 or 20 points every game. We have had some pretty good fourth quarters and beaten them by a couple of points every game. I don't think that's any indictment of the way they are playing or any endorsement of how we're playing.

COACH POPOVICH: I thought that come Playoff time we would need more size. I thought that, you know, with a lot of teams that play against us, they can throw a lot of bigs out and they say well we have got 12, 18 fouls, 24 fouls we can use against Tim (Duncan). We can't do that with business. We don't want Timmy to get in foul trouble. It's different for us to have another big out there that can go guard somebody that's got size, and rebound and learn how to play with Tim was important to us, Nazr had that size. By all reports he was an intelligent young man, hard worker, and both of those traits have panned out and his size has helped, playing next to Tim. But it was a size factor more than anything.

COACH POPOVICH: That's very difficult to answer. He has so many qualities that a coach or any human being would appreciate. I think it's his genuineness. He's an absolutely genuine individual.

COACH POPOVICH: It's not a top priority. It's not -- if he plays he plays but at this point in this series it would be very difficult and I think probably unfair to put him in this situation because he doesn't know what has transpired and what adjustments we have made, what we'd like to do as you mentioned it would just be under a circumstance where we're playing very badly, people in foul trouble, people are hurt, something like that, as far as this is concerned.

COACH POPOVICH: That was a significant part of it. There were many reasons, but that was one part of it, for sure.