NBA WESTERN CONFERENCE FINALS: SPURS v SUNS

June 1, 2005

Mike D'Antoni

COACH D'ANTONI: They just -- we just ran into a better team. They played well tonight. Parker and Udrih had some big shots that we were kind of conceding. They made enough to beat us. I thought -- obviously the third quarter was the telling point. We just didn't shoot the ball well. We kind of got into a little bit of a one-on-one kind of mode and, you know, once they get you down a little bit this is a tough team to come back on. I think we got -- paid the price for it in the third.

COACH D'ANTONI: My thoughts are -- I was very proud to be able to coach these guys. These guys have been resilient all year, been great. We have a great nucleus that we can keep together. Been together seven months and had the franchise record -- you know, it's been there for -- been in existence for 37 years and we tied that and we did a lot of great things. I hope, I think, we hope that it's just the first step and we got to keep building. We understand that by now San Antonio is a better team, a couple of other teams that are maybe a little bit better. But there's no reason why us being so young and just new together that we can't improve and next year have a better year than this year.

COACH D'ANTONI: Well, again, I don't know if emotion-wise or whatever -- just didn't seem like we had that extra pop again tonight. Probably we just didn't execute real well. You have got give them credit too. They can lock you up sometimes and they did a good job defensively on us. We just didn't seem to be able to move the ball and get in our stuff. We weren't real fluid. We have done that a few times this year. Again, give them credit too because they kind of put the clamps on us that quarter.

COACH D'ANTONI: Probably ran out of gas a little bit. That's us being kind of short. And I thought Joe (Johnson) ran out of gas a little bit also, and that will happen. But again, I thought we played pretty well. Amare (Stoudemire) had a game that's incredible. Just think, the guy is 22 years old and the series that he had against Tim Duncan is unbelievable. I think you can see a pretty good future that we can have here. We hate to lose and we're kind of down today, but I think we start working for next year right now and come back this summer and put together some pieces and see if we can do it a little bit better next year.

COACH D'ANTONI: I am trying to remember. The one we doubled and he came back? Yeah, we didn't quite get to him. They have been doing that when we double off Joe (Johnson) he kind of circles back in there. I have to look at the tape, but obviously we didn't get to him and that was -- I thought the big back-breaker was the 3 seconds they had the ball out of bounds and Tim Duncan missed the shot tipped it back in. Got back up to 5. That hurt us.

COACH D'ANTONI: We exceeded expectations, no doubt about it. I just thought that the quality of people that we have and how they came every day and the entertainment that they gave the fans, was super. That's why I am really proud to be associated with these guys. They did everything that I asked and even more and I just think it's a great group and there's no reason why, you know -- I didn't, you know -- it would have been a fairy tale if we came out and won the championships. And that doesn't happen; you have to earn it and you have to lose some battles along the way. But this is a great first step and we know to be able to duplicate this it's not going to be easy. We're going to have to come out and everybody is going to have to come back in September ready to go. No reason why we can't get a lot better with the youth and playing together a little bit more.

COACH D'ANTONI: Right.

COACH D'ANTONI: Obvious answer, we have got to get better defensively. We will still keep our style. We'll probably beef up a little bit more and try to get some more size and strength. But more or less we're going to play an up-and-down game, with Steve Nash running it and Amare (Stoudemire) getting loose in the middle. We're going to keep the style, but we have got to get a lot better defensively. We can get a lot better. We're very athletic and we're young. No reason why we can't guard people. Probably try to get a little bit deeper also. Probably take a step, another step and it might be another two steps or three steps, you never know. But we don't want to take any steps back or do something that, okay, that doesn't work, now let's try this, and that's where you get in trouble. We want to inch our way there, and hopefully we can make a big step. But if not, just get a little bit better next year.

COACH D'ANTONI: We didn't make any, that wasn't good. Again, simple terms, they had a couple of guys that were shooting about 14 percent for the series and they hit one, hit two for two and one hit two for six. We didn't hit ours. We're supposed to be the 3-point shooting team, so I think it's almost like Tim Duncan missing his foul shots the other night made the difference. The difference we didn't make our threes and if we made them maybe we would have been there at the end. You can analyze the game with stats, that's an easy way to look at it. We just didn't make enough of our threes.