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NBA FINALS: CAVALIERS v SPURS

June 14, 2007

Mike Brown

CLEVELAND, OHIO: Game Four

COACH MIKE BROWN: You've got to give San Antonio credit. It's a hell of a team. They did everything they were supposed to do in order to win the basketball games, tonight and the three games before.
I thought throughout the course of the series, especially in the last two ballgames, we had our opportunities, the crowd was great, gave us extra energy that we needed. We just could never get over the hump. But a lot of that you've got to give credit to the Spurs.

Q. Congratulations on a great run. Two things: What did you learn as a coach on this run, and what did LeBron learn? How did he evolve during this experience?
COACH MIKE BROWN: Playing basketball this long is new for everybody in the locker room, I think, except for Eric Snow. So just waking up every day in the month of June and having to go lace them up and win ballgames is an experience in itself.
But on top of that, I think perseverance. I think we've been through some situations where we were expected to sweep Washington. It's still a good team. That was hard to do when you're young in terms of being young in the playoffs. Then we played against a veteran ballclub with basically three All-Stars in New Jersey, and we had to win Game 6 on the road in a hostile environment after they had a huge run.
And then to play the Pistons and have to win four games in a row, you know, the experiences that we went through on this journey, they're invaluable, and they'll help us for the future.

Q. What does LeBron take from this, do you think?
COACH MIKE BROWN: More than anything, I think he takes perseverance and understanding. You've just got to keep staying with it, keep staying with it no matter what the score is, no matter what the series is. And eventually, if you understand that, like you said, no excuses and let's defend, we're going to give ourselves a chance.

Q. With LeBron, very uncharacteristic of him in this series, averaged about six turnovers a game and shot only about 33 percent. How much of that was their defense and how much of it do you think was he just ran out of gas?
COACH MIKE BROWN: You've got to give their defense credit. They did a nice job blitzing him at times, keeping two on him, and then at other times they just dropped him. You know, the changing defenses throughout the flow or course of the game was something that we as a team didn't adjust to very well. But he had some great looks and they didn't go in, and not just his jump shots, but we're talking about he had a few lay-ups, I think, almost every game that normally go in, but for some reason they didn't.

Q. The fatigue?
COACH MIKE BROWN: It could be the fatigue. I mean, not only that, they're a great defensive team. You've got a guy like Tim Duncan at the rim with his length and his knowledge and understanding and all that stuff, through the course of the ballgame you think about a guy like that being there. If you think about it too long, maybe that might have something to do with it. But I think it's a combination of everything. I ran him a hell of a lot of minutes these playoffs. He's our guy, and he won plenty of games for us. We needed him to win a lot of games for us, and he did that. It could have been the fatigue factor a little bit, also.

Q. In all four games you fell behind by double digits in the second half. Is that something you cannot do in The Finals, particularly against this San Antonio team?
COACH MIKE BROWN: Yeah, I'd love to not do that again. It's a good team, and they had something to do with it. You know, I thought Games 1 and 2, we did not play our best basketball technically, nor when it came to effort. I thought Games 3 and 4 our effort was there, but sometimes it just wasn't enough. And when you go down double digits against a team like that, whew, it's going to be tough to come back.

Q. Could you please talk about Manu Ginobili's bounce back game tonight?
COACH MIKE BROWN: Manu was terrific. You know, he's got the heart of a lion. He's not a guy that when he gets hit that's going to stay down. He may get hit, he may fall for a few seconds, and then he's going to bounce back up and he's going to be on the attack. That's what happened with Game 3. He didn't have a great game. He knew that they needed him to step up in order to win, and he took on the challenge. He hit some tough shots for them tonight, especially down the stretch.

Q. You're up 63-62 with just under six minutes to go, time-out, they come out and they go on a 10-2 or 12-2 run or something like that. What happened at that point? Was it just the experience of the Spurs knowing that, okay, we can put them away here, and the inexperience of you guys? What went wrong?
COACH MIKE BROWN: We had a group on the floor that was defending, rebounding and scoring in that fourth quarter, and that's why I elected to stay with them. Probably ran out of a little bit of gas. That was part of it. But then another part of it was the Spurs' experience.
There were times throughout this series that I thought we did a hell of a job defensively for 19, 20, 21 seconds, and you talk about a group with poise, that group showed a lot of poise by making shots with two and three seconds on the shot clock. And not one time the entire series did they ever look rattled or panicked or frazzled at all. And when you have a team that moves the basketball like they do for that long into the shot clock and you're chasing because you've got to double with Tim, it wears on you, and you give up offensive rebounds and you give up late drives.

Q. Just to follow up on that, Tony Parker, MVP of this series, you had him way back when and he comes back to haunt you in this series. Can you just talk about his development and what he meant to this team in this series?
COACH MIKE BROWN: He was huge for them. You know, we had problems obviously stopping him from getting in the paint. Tonight it was more in transition than anything else. He did a solid job getting into the paint the first half with the pick-and-roll. We kind of figured it out the second half. But with his quickness, his ability to shoot that little push shot in, he shot the ball well the last couple of games.
When you add all those intangibles, you see the growth from year 1 when we were together until now. You add that to the poise and determination, you've got a very good basketball player and he caused us problems the whole series.

Q. What can you say about Coach Popovich, first fourth title, becomes the fifth coach to win four titles. What kind of impact has he had on his players, the Spurs and the city of San Antonio?
COACH MIKE BROWN: He is an impact. They have great players on the team. They have had great players come through the organization. But the one steady, you know, has been Pop. He doesn't get enough credit. He doesn't get enough credit for his Xs and Os. But more importantly, he doesn't get enough credit for his people skills. He's a tremendous teacher and a tremendous person, and he's the reason that that organization is where it's at.

Q. To follow up on a question a couple of moments ago, can you talk about how special -- I mean, this is a team that just beat you, about how special, how unique it is to have a team like this with that kind of poise, you got on a 14-0 run, they never get rattled, they don't show any weaknesses? Can you talk about how special that is in a basketball team to have a team come out and do that night after night?
COACH MIKE BROWN: Well, you need that in order to win big games, especially big games on the road, and they showed that these last two games because our crowd was terrific, our guys did bring the effort and energy to the games. But their poise was something that helped them win the ballgame, especially down the stretch.
Our team showed that throughout the playoffs themselves. I thought there were plenty of times when we could have panicked throughout the course of some of our series when we didn't. You know, the direction that we're heading in as a group is something that I'm really excited about. I'm looking forward to seasons to come.

End of FastScripts

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