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NBA WESTERN CONFERENCE FINALS: JAZZ v SPURSMay 22, 2007Jerry SloanSAN ANTONIO, TEXAS: Game Two Q. Jerry, what is it about your team that makes it such a tough rebounding team? I mean, you have out rebounded virtually everybody in the playoffs. What is it? JERRY SLOAN: I don't know. We just have guys go after the ball. That's the only thing I can think of. Sure didn't come to you most of the time. Hopefully over the years we've played, we have been able to rebound some if we executed our offense and take good shots out of our offense and we have a chance to rebound some of the offensive rebounds. Defensively, we don't get on the floor. We have always hung around the basket defensively a little bit, maybe a little bit too much. Try to rub out of there. Q. Is this one of the better rebounding teams you've had? JERRY SLOAN: Yeah. These guys have been pretty good rebounders. Q. Top five. JERRY SLOAN: I don't know. I can't remember that much. (Smiling). Q. Jerry, a year ago you and the rest of the organization were gathering together to watch the lottery. JERRY SLOAN: Thank you very much. (Laughter). Q. How satisfying is it to, a year later, have a team in the Conference Finals? JERRY SLOAN: I am just happy for our players. I said the other day I am happy for our players because I think they worked hard, and we had to have a little bit of luck to get here. And you have to have a little bit of luck to stay in it. We have been fortunate so far. And I'm happy for them. It has been fun to watch them play and have their ups and downs and see how they come out of it. Q. Jerry, you spoke of maybe of the possibility of intimidation Sunday when you looked at the film and everything. Did you feel like that was there? Did you feel like your players were kind of satisfied having exceeded expectations in the series? JERRY SLOAN: I don't think it was as much they got frustrated. For whatever reason, I don't know why, we started shaking our heads. If we made a mistake, it was somebody else's fault. That's the worst thing you want to have happen because that destroys a team quickly. I was impressed with the way they came back and tried to play the second half. We have to have a full 48 minutes today. We can't stand around and play against this team with just a few minutes of basketball. We will have to have an awfully strong effort, and can't give up as many layups as we did. That's been very difficult for us to accept from my standpoint. If we give up layups then we don't have much of a chance. It is very difficult if you give up layups to run to the other end of the floor. You end up having to walk it up and you stay in that mode instead of a competitive mode. Once in a while you get a defensive rebound and not able to get in the open floor which we weren't able to do a great deal. Q. I know late in the year when the team wasn't playing well you were pretty concerned because it was a younger team and you felt it was harder for a younger team to kind of get it back and go forward when that happened late in the year. What happened since then that has allowed you to get here? JERRY SLOAN: At that particular time, as I recall, Kirilenko broke his thumb and he wasn't able to play. He missed 10 or 12 days and then he got a splint that he wore. And Giricek was out. He had bruised ribs. Those two guys didn't play. We aren't strong enough off the bench when we have to put Matt Harpring and guys like that on the floor and play them a lot more minutes. It weakens us and it hurt us some and we lost confidence to it. That happened. End of FastScripts |
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