NBA WESTERN CONFERENCE FINALS: SPURS v SUNS

May 30, 2005

Gregg Popovich

COACH POPOVICH: I was more interested in their offense, which I thought was great and they did a great job of pushing the basketball and just ripped our transition defense apart. I think the stats say they are 26 transition points, but they are more than that because we chart that stuff. We do it differently, but their transition offense was great. They found people, they shot, our transition D was poor. That was the ballgame. That was the main part of the ballgame. We still would have had a chance to hang in there. I think we did hang in fairly well, but when a team shoots 57 and we shoot as poorly as we did from the free throw line it makes it very, very difficult. I thought they did a great job in pushing the ball and were really active offensively, did a very good job. If we score that number of points I am fine with that, that's good enough to win basketball games, but you have got to be able to stop somebody and we just did not do it tonight. They deserve the credit for that.

COACH POPOVICH: You needed to ask Mike that, if they rededicated. I can't say what they say to each other. But I think our transition defense was not very good and at the same time, they obviously, you know, wanted to push it hard at us. So it's a bad combination.

COACH POPOVICH: Well, they listened to him very well. They listen very well.

COACH POPOVICH: Well, Joe Johnson is a great player, I mean, he makes a difference. This is his second game back and he was probably a little rusty the first game, Game 3. Came out very aggressive did a great job, but I thought many times we guarded him well and he made good shots. Bruce Bowen played fantastic defense on him down the stretch there when he made that shot over on the wing. Just unbelievable shot by Joe, it was a great shot. But I think Bruce's defense was just as good, it went down, but he's a tough cover, he's a tough cover, no doubt about that.

COACH POPOVICH: No.

COACH POPOVICH: A lot of communication that's involved, especially when you are cross matched, which we were because of how we were guarding them. People really have to talk. We have to know who picks up the ball and we have to make decisions on the way back. We didn't do it very well. But I don't think that's an unusual thing, with this team. This team won 62 games this year and they are a hell of a team, so we can't afford to let them get away from us in that way because that's the worst thing that we can possibly do to put ourselves in a hole.

COACH POPOVICH: I think that's probably a pretty good assessment.

COACH POPOVICH: Well, they have double teamed him on and off the entire time. We didn't lose the basketball game because Tim Duncan got doubled. That has been part of what they do. We lost the basketball game because of transition D, poor free throw shooting overall. And they played well. They deserve credit for playing well. They deserved to win the basketball game.