NBA FINALS: PISTONS v SPURS

June 23, 2005

Tim Duncan

TIM DUNCAN: There was a point there, I got on a roll there for a little while, my shot felt good and things started going down for me and I just tried to be aggressive in that point in time. It wasn't the greatest of games but there was a stretch there where I felt really good and I just wanted to be assertive at that point. A lot of credit to Detroit, they had one heck of an effort. They are an incredible defensive team. They made us work for everything that we got. It's just hats off to them.

TIM DUNCAN: No. Despite what you think, we don't get those stats at the time. (Laughter).

TIM DUNCAN: I felt like the game was going bad for me, yeah, I did feel that. But it was about just kind of pushing through it and just the perseverance. Those guys, my teammates just continue to throw the ball in and to feed me. They were more confident in me than I was, and that is so appreciated. They will never even understand, and they just kept coming to me and kept giving me the opportunities and I got one to fall in and two to fall in and things started happening. Then I was able to draw some double-teams and got some guys some open shots. The whole game was about perseverance, sticking to it, keeping it going, things not going well, don't really care and keep on going.

TIM DUNCAN: I did all right, too.

TIM DUNCAN: I hate to be repetitive, but perseverance. We just stuck with it. We just kept on pushing. We just kept on fighting. We didn't do anything special that we had not done the first six games. We stuck to it. We believed in what we were doing and we believed that if we did it the right way we could get it done, and a lot of credit to our guards who continually ran off screens and got hit left and right and continued to fight over screens and get back in front of people. I thought we contested shots so much better than we did in the last three and four games. We just -- perseverance. I'll end there. Thank you.

TIM DUNCAN: He's -- to use one of his quotes, he's the head of the snake, he's the one that makes us go. He prepares us so well for games. He's great at getting on you and praising you when it's time and calling you a piece of whatever at times. He balances it so well. I just -- I don't know what to say about him. He really is ask, and not taking anything away from Larry Brown, he really is the best in the league I believe.

TIM DUNCAN: No. Tonight, all he talked about the last two days was appreciating the time, appreciating it and living in the moment; understanding that this is a first Game 7 in however many years, and to really go out, and that if we did things the right way, the way that we've planned them, the way that we've wanted to do the entire series, things would go the right way. He put that in our heads so much, we just stuck with it. We didn't have the greatest game. We scored 81 points, which is pretty decent for us, it's all right for us, but we didn't have the greatest game where we ran away from anybody, but we just stuck with it.

TIM DUNCAN: Manu is unbelievable. You can say this about so many people, and whether it be true or not, I think it's absolutely true for him. I don't think we've even scratched the surface with him. He's got so much to him. He just plays with reckless abandon, he doesn't care the time or the situation, he doesn't care if it's a preseason game or it's a Finals game. He plays the same way. He's going to continue to grow and we're going to continue to grow around him. We're going to continue to understand what he wants to do and when he wants to do it. He was so big for us, every game, in the fourth quarter, he was the guy that took things or really made things happen, and to play besides someone like that who can do that in that situation, it takes so much pressure off of myself, off of Tony. It helps our team so much, and you can see it, and he doesn't care. He's going to make the play. He's going to make it happen, and he got a lot -- well, he gave himself a lot of crap for the finish of Game 6 or whatever, he thought he took some bad shots. He thought he would make some plays down the stretch and make some shots. He got on himself about it more than anybody else got on him and that's what he's going to do. We understand it now and we love having him and we love -- we love what he does down the stretch.

TIM DUNCAN: Not officially, at least. (Laughter).

TIM DUNCAN: It's a great feeling. It's a great feeling. In years past, we've lost six, seven, eight, nine guys in a year, and rebuilt. I think we've really got a core here that we're in love with; that obviously is a pretty decent core, and we're going to have it together for a couple of years. Pop will probably come in here and say that we didn't play very well tonight, and he'll be tough on us, but we can play -- we can play a lot better, and that's something horrible to say up here right now as we're sitting up here NBA champs, but we have years to do that, and I think that's the greatest feeling in the world. We have a team that will be able to try to -- in years to come, try to continue to get back to this point.