NBA FINALS: PISTONS v SPURS

June 21, 2005

Tim Duncan

TIM DUNCAN: Not at all. We moved the ball, that's been our -- the way we've been playing the entire way. I'm going to get the ball when I'm in position. We did hold on to the ball a little too long at times. The ball stuck a little bit. We went through a stretch there where we were forcing some bad ones or we were not hitting the open guy and kind of trying to penetrate their defense as we have been in the games that we have won. Something we'll have to clean up for the next game.

TIM DUNCAN: We said it after the last game, they are best facing elimination or down. That's when they are best. We knew we had to put a very good game out there to beat them. We didn't do it. It's a disappointing loss but we play all year to have home court to have this opportunity, so we're going to come in this building two days from now and do a lot of clean-up stuff.

TIM DUNCAN: They were big. They hit some big shots. Chauncey was big from the start. He had been feeling it all night, and once they got rolling, the confidence kind of permeated throughout their entire team, guys were getting it open and they were letting it go and it was going down for them. Beyond that, when they did miss shots, they got some offensive rebounds that really hurt us. All in all they played a much bigger game than we did.

TIM DUNCAN: We all understand what we have to do. We are going to watch some film. We are going to turn some plays and understand, I think people already understand what we gave away, and why we gave it away. We're going to have to play a lot better this next game. We're going to have to play solid for a longer period of time. I think that's what they did tonight. They just played solid for a longer period of time. I think that we'll run that focus, we had too many -- too many off-possessions, drive possessions where we just didn't get anything. We dribbled around, dribbled around for too long and they were able to stay in front of us and we had to cast up a jumper or something, a contested jumper. We'll do better on possessions in those terms, and we get another five, six, seven, eight possessions where we get more quality shots, it's a different ballgame for us.

TIM DUNCAN: I'm being as aggressive as I can be. I'll be in my position when I'm in my position. We're not going to force-feed. We're not going to start doing that now. We haven't played like that all season. If the plays are called we're going to run the play and we'll try to get into position. They are a very good defensive basketball team and they are very good at getting around in front and changing positions and doing whatever they may have to do. I'll try to be as aggressive as I can to get the ball whenever I can, but I'm not going to demand the ball and clock it up and make it whether I score we win or not.

TIM DUNCAN: It was a little bit too open for us. I think they shot the high 40s, I don't know if they shot that the entire series except for maybe the blowout, but it's just not the game we want to play. Those are the clean-up things we have to do before Thursday's game I was talking about. They got too many open jumpshots and we just ran into a situation where they got open jumpshots and they were not missing the open jumpshots. We'll do a better job of that next game and keeping a hand in people's face and hopefully get that percentage down to a respectful amount for us.