NBA FINALS: PISTONS v SPURS

June 14, 2005

Manu Ginobili

MANU GINOBILI: No, I think they played a very good defense. They almost double teamed every pick-and-roll, so I had to get rid of the ball, find the open guy. You know, I just didn't play well enough.

MANU GINOBILI: I'm all right. I just get hit there pretty often, so I'm used to it. Just one of those things that happens every other game.

MANU GINOBILI: A little bit. It was hard for me to come back into the game after being on the bench for a couple of minutes, my leg gets cold, so it's hard to warm it up again. But as I said before, I just didn't play well. It's not a matter of putting excuses, find, you know, some way to find a reason. I just didn't make shots. I turned the ball over a lot. That's it.

MANU GINOBILI: I think we have three or four turnovers in a row that gave them easy layups, so when that happens, the whole crowd gets pumped up, they get confident, so it's like a snowball. We didn't play well for those three quarters and we were still almost tied, I think. So it's something that we've got to be happy about in some sort of way. But then we just gave them too many things. We can't allow them to get so many offensive boards, I don't know many how many they got; 17, too many points on that. And besides that, we turned the ball over so much, on the road, we're not going to win.

MANU GINOBILI: No, I don't think so. For three quarters in Game 1, I just didn't have the opportunity to make many shots and I was feeling good about myself. I was feeling pretty good. I think I just didn't have a great game. We as a team didn't have that juice and that -- you're not sharp, those details that you need to do well on the road. That was not a matter of one guy didn't play well. Besides that, I don't think anybody of us played really well.

MANU GINOBILI: You know, it's way much more attention than what I would like. You know, I'm a calm guy, I like to rest and don't think about anything else than, you know, get out of the games. We watch way too many videos, we practice, we have games, so when I'm off the court, I like just to rest and forget about basketball. We talk too much about the way I play or things like that. Of course, I'm happy because I have been playing well and I've got to be satisfied because of that. But it's something that I am trying to get off, I'm trying not to think a lot about what people are saying or things like that.

MANU GINOBILI: We knew they were going to play more aggressively and with more determination than they did in San Antonio. So I think we were very good at holding them kind of tight for the first half when they were so, you know, so aggressive. But then we couldn't do it for 48 minutes. That's a big key play on the road. Ben Wallace, even Lindsey Hunter played a heck of a game on defense, and the whole team made us make too many mistakes.