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NBA FINALS: LAKERS v CELTICS

June 11, 2008

Pau Gasol

LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA: Practice Day

Q. What are the easy parts of the triangle offense and what are the difficult parts of picking up that offense?
PAU GASOL: The easy parts, well, you've got to know your spots. You've got to know your spacing. You've got to know your options, your wrinkles. You've got to know how to respect spacing on the floor. It's a system that kind of encourages that, for you to space out and really have room to operate and cut, and if they take away something, there's a next option. You know, it's a system that you're supposed to make a lot of reads, which is a good thing, but it's also difficult because everybody has to know the reads and make them right.
But once you get used to it, it's pretty good. It's very effective, and if you dominate the system, it's really productive.

Q. Has it been frustrating for you, it seems like in Europe people in basketball accept you for who you are and your qualities, whereas in the NBA since you've been in the league, everyone wants you to be less soft, more physical and some other type of player? Has that been something you've had to deal with over your career?
PAU GASOL: At times, at times, yes. I think I've become more physical since I got in the NBA. My game was very different when I got to the NBA. I was more of an outside player. I played a lot of small forward before I came to the NBA and it was much more finesse and facing up the basket.
Now my game, because I've always been the tallest on my teams pretty much, has been more to a center position instead of a power forward, which I felt more comfortable. I don't know how it feels anymore to play a power forward and be able to be more comfortable and fluent out there.
But I just try to adjust to what the team needs. Most of the time we need somebody that rebounds, plays defense now and hustles and bangs up. Even though my body is not fit for that most of the time, I still try to have a lot of hard, and I'm a competitor, and I'm going to go out there and do what it takes.

Q. Are you a better player now since coming over from Memphis, or just are we noticing more? Is it motivation that could make you a better player?
PAU GASOL: I think there's a lot to it, all the aspects that you touched. Motivation obviously is a big factor. It makes you play harder, I think, and you're playing for a purpose and with a purpose, and that helps.
Obviously being in LA, the exposure is 1,000 times bigger than being in Memphis, so people probably didn't notice me much when I was in Memphis because probably had one or two nationally televised games and probably when the games came on, people really didn't want to watch our game.
What else? What else did you touch? That was pretty much it, right?

Q. Are you having fun now?
PAU GASOL: Yeah, I'm having a lot of fun. Winning to me is fun. Having an opportunity to win a championship is fun. That's what I'm about and that's how I have fun, and that's something that I've been lacking a lot lately in my NBA career. So definitely enjoying it, definitely having a lot of fun, and very fortunate to have this amazing opportunity to be in the NBA Final with the Lakers and still very well alive. So we're good to go.

Q. What do you think of the shots that Kevin Garnett is taking? Do you think these are shots that he usually makes or do you think you guys are a factor in pushing him away from the basket a little bit more than he's used to?
PAU GASOL: Well, I think his game this year has moved out a little bit more in the perimeter than it has in the past. I think I noticed in the playoffs he's been shooting a lot from the outside and knocking them down for the most part. I think he's been pretty effective during the playoffs, and maybe the last couple games he hasn't been as effective shooting the ball from the outside. But I've been trying to do a pretty good job of contesting and getting a hand in his face and making it hard. But you know, he had a couple games off, very capable of bouncing back and having a very good shooting night the next couple games. Hopefully that won't happen, but he's capable of it because he's such a good player.
We're trying to play him physical and play him hard and make sure we contest every single shot and make sure we make him fade as much as possible, fadeaway from the basket instead of getting in the lane which is harder to guard. He had a couple good hoops in the fourth quarter, I think, earlier on going to the basket, and he's effective doing that. But I think last night it was a tough game.
I think most of the players out there struggled physically. You could tell that the travel and the Game 2 and 3 being so tight together, going across the country pretty much is an overseas trip. Me going from Boston to LA, refueling in the middle, it was like going back to Spain. It was pretty much the same time in hours.
Anyway, I think that was a factor. But you know, I'm always going to play him tough and make him take those shots, and hopefully he'll miss them.

Q. Does the fact that you mentioned it was a tough game and the fact that you guys won ugly, does that help set maybe a platform for you guys to continue your success and perhaps put a little bit more of your style, your game, into the next -- obviously the rest of the series?
PAU GASOL: I think it should give us a lot of confidence that we were able to get a win last night playing, I think, as bad as we did offensively. We definitely battled and hustled and played hard defensively and did a good job on them, but we struggled offensively. We weren't fluent, we weren't confident, we weren't being ourselves out there. And it's encouraging. It's encouraging because we have so much room for improvement for Game 4 team-wise that we should be encouraged and confident going into Game 4 and being able to control the tempo, play more moving the ball, sharing the ball and finding guys, and it should be fun. So hopefully that will happen.

End of FastScripts

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