NBA FINALS: PISTONS v SPURS

June 18, 2005

Gregg Popovich

COACH GREGG POPOVICH: Yeah, they did it last year, too. They have got a great, as you say, ability to be resilient and to come back fully confident, change their execution in the sense that from one night to the next it goes from poor to excellent. Defense goes from pretty good to great. Poor rebounding to great rebounding, you know, that sort of thing. They really come back well when they don't play well, and that's always been a characteristic of us, too, but I think they have really done it well the last two games.

COACH GREGG POPOVICH: It's strange, it's a strange feeling. The strange feeling is when you win a game, actually because you feel for the other guy. As we've said, not so much that you're going to give it away, but it's a strange feeling when you're going against a good friend.

COACH GREGG POPOVICH: Well, we can keep the basketball more than anything. We have to have more possessions and when we turn the basketball over as much as we have, that's the No. 1 thing that keeps us from having more opportunities. Against these guys, it's a double whammy, because when you do it, they are down the court and it's part of their offense and they are scoring. In the halfcourt we played good defense, but to give them those points, not only adds to their score, but limits our ability to get any points on the board and that's what generally has been tough for us. Timmy, he's catching the ball, he just has to figure out a way to get in the hole. He's getting enough touches in the halfcourt, he'll continue to get the ball, they are not fronting him or anything like that. So he's getting the basketball. We've just got to play better.

COACH GREGG POPOVICH: I think philosophically, or at least on paper, one would probably say that if you have the home-court advantage to start, and you get one on the road, it's a huge advantage. The other side of the coin is, if the Spurs have a home-court advantage and you don't get one on the road, then it becomes a disadvantage. I think that's in general an accurate way to look at the series. So it's a huge game as far as I look at it, I think it's monstrous to try to get the fifth game. To say anything different I would probably be disingenuous, because in my heart, you know, we knew we had to get a game. Sure, you want to get them both and all that kind of baloney, but you want to get a game on the road in this format without a doubt.

COACH GREGG POPOVICH: I wonder where you guys get your information sometimes. We just had a film session a half an hour ago.

COACH GREGG POPOVICH: So you're saying there's a leak on my team? (Laughter).

COACH GREGG POPOVICH: He doesn't fix things real well. Ask Richard. He doesn't fix real well, or else he had some other people that didn't do it very well.

COACH GREGG POPOVICH: Just like, you know, any film, you know, Coach had a film session at some point, I'm sure. They won. We all have film sessions. Win or lose you're going to go in and point out what you did well or what you did poorly. That's part of the deal, you know, to keep players up to speed, because people talk about things on TV, in the print media. Very honestly, a lot of it is inaccurate. People think they see things in the game and what happened, and that's not what happened. When you look at the film, even coaches and players, you know, you think something happened in the game and you look at the film and you go, geez, that's not what I thought I saw in the game at all. So to see the film and to pick out the most important parts and specifically show players what they did well or not well in pick-and-roll or transition D or whatever it is, is important for them for the following game, so we did that. And I guess you're referring to the approach or how heated the session might have been. Let's just say it was heart felt. (Laughter).

COACH GREGG POPOVICH: I'm trying to be serious. We have a big game tomorrow.

COACH GREGG POPOVICH: That's part of the film, too. We did this well, okay, how tough is this, can we please do this. That's what we're trying to do, why don't we do more of that, this is not the way we want to do this. Sure, it goes back and forth. Some is positive and some is negative.

COACH GREGG POPOVICH: We've talked a lot the last two days, the last two games I think have been more about what's between the ears and what's in the chest, has sort of been our mantra. With Tony, it's between the ears. He's a young guy, he's 23, he has good games and he has bad games. But for him, he's best when he approaches each game as a scoring guard, as an attack guard, as an aggressive guard, rather than starting the game as a distributor and I'm-going-to-keep-the-team-together guard. So we want to get him back in that sort of frame of mind.

COACH GREGG POPOVICH: Can you give me an exact description of "giddy" before I answer that?

COACH GREGG POPOVICH: "Giddy" means a lot of different things to different people. One can be giddy for a variety of reasons. Let's name a few. (Laughter).

COACH GREGG POPOVICH: A bonus check makes one giddy. A glass of fine wine that's bought cheaply makes me giddy. And in a basketball sense, I'm trying to think about what would make one giddy on the court, and the only thing that would make my giddy get up would be a win. I mean, you're going to raise up on a win, but on a loss, you know, there's no giddy in the loss. A whole lot of giddy in a win. But I don't remember giddy in the film session. We did have one funny part in the film session and if you can figure that out you would be a hell of an investigator and that was in the first five minutes in the game. If you can find out when that was, you'll get a kick out of it. Other than that, it was all basketball.

COACH GREGG POPOVICH: Right.

COACH GREGG POPOVICH: I think what we have done is been very physical, and I think that we have had some players react very poorly to it. For instance, it's not a good idea to bring the ball up the court along the sideline when your defender is waiting across halfcourt and you see a very large person to your right coming at the same time. One would want to cross the court with the ball or get rid of it. But the worst thing to do is to dribble across the halfcourt line so that two people can jump all over you. So we are doing our best to explain that to a couple of individuals, but other than that, I think we're okay.