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NBA WESTERN CONFERENCE FINALS: SPURS v LAKERS

May 29, 2008

Gregg Popovich

LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA: Game Five

COACH POPOVICH: Congratulations to the Lakers. Wish them the best. Did a great job. Thought we did as good a job as we could do defensively. But just couldn't muster enough offense game to game. That was the series.

Q. Pop, you had a 20-point -- you lost one game, had a 20-point lead. Lost this one with a 17-point lead. Was energy an issue throughout the series?
COACH POPOVICH: No, teams make runs. We made a run, went up. They made a run and then from then it was an even game basically. Each of us made a big run. I don't think that's too strange.

Q. Pop, you used Kurt off the bench tonight and got a much better job on the boards. Can you comment on that?
COACH POPOVICH: Kurt was great. He hasn't played much and he came in tonight, played good defense, boarded well for us. Thought he did a fine job and gave us a chance to win.

Q. There is a lot of good young teams in the West: New Orleans, Utah, Portland is obviously going to be real good.
COACH POPOVICH: Right.

Q. How do you see -- do you see the West in transition? Do you feel like you will have to make changes?
COACH POPOVICH: So when you lose, you got to make the changes, right? If we wouldn't, we wouldn't have to do a damn thing.
No, I think that's too superficial analysis of any team at the end of the season. Every team makes some kind of changes. So we'll look at our team and see what we need to do. We've made some changes every year, whether we've won or lost.
That's no different than usual.

Q. You had said as you put this team together that you wanted to give your guys who won the championship last year, your core guys, an opportunity to win again. Are you pleased with how that decision played out?
COACH POPOVICH: I thought we did a fine job. I mean, again, I think the Lakers basically scored 91 or 92 points tonight. They shot 6 or 8 free throws at the end and the 3 that didn't matter.
If you can hold the Lakers in the low 90s, every game, that's a hell of a defensive job considering what they've done in the playoffs. We just didn't muster the offense for a variety of reasons.
So I'm proud of the work our guys did. I thought they busted their butts. That doesn't mean you wholesale change things. It means that they're pretty damn solid. They just played a team that was better. That's why the Lakers won.

Q. When you analyze why you couldn't muster the offense as the games went on, do you think it was tentativeness or do you think it was their defense? What are some of the variety of reasons you were talking about?
COACH POPOVICH: The only reason I'll give is I think L.A. played really good defense. I think their aggressiveness was really good.

Q. Despite you were talking about holding the Lakers to the points you did in the playoffs and the defense effort you gave, if somebody told you before this series that Kobe was going to get to the line as few times as he did and would still have that impact, would you have --
COACH POPOVICH: Right. When one considers, you know, we told our team at the beginning we wanted to stop their transition offense, which we did. We wanted to hold them to the low 90s, which we did. We wanted to cut their free throws as a team and Kobe's, which we did drastically.
If we really thought we would be able to do all that, I would think the series would be a win for us. So the fact that we didn't come through offensively is a disappointment but part of that is a credit to the Lakers.

Q. Did you feel like you guys got enough production from your bench tonight?
COACH POPOVICH: How much did we lose by? Whatever that number is, that's the production we wish we would have gotten (smiling).

Q. When you think about this team looking ahead to the future, how much different do you think this roster will be next year looking forward?
COACH POPOVICH: Late arrival (smiling).
I have no idea. Our roster has changed every year to some degree. You know, Timmy and Manu and Tony will obviously be there. Some guys are in their last year of their contract. We got to find out what we want to do.
But it is no different than any other year. Whether we've won a championship or not, we've made changes to our team that we thought were appropriate. That's what we'll do the next month before the draft and come together and see what we want to do.

Q. Is it fair to ask at this point now that it's over what physical condition Manu was in through this series?
COACH POPOVICH: No.
The better team won. You get a seven-game series, you win four games, you're the best team.

Q. Any cumulative effect from tough first round series, probably tougher than five games, and then going seven, and having to play from behind in your own building?
COACH POPOVICH: As I look back, it was -- it was a tough beginning of the series for us considering the seven games against New Orleans and the quick turnaround and losing that game in Game 1. I think that probably took a little bit of a mental toll that we had to recover from.
So it was a tough beginning to the series, but I thought we fought back pretty good. We just faced a better team.

End of FastScripts

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