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NBA WESTERN CONFERENCE FINALS: NUGGETS v LAKERS

May 27, 2009

Phil Jackson

LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA: Game Five

Q. What did you think of the NBA fine yesterday?
COACH JACKSON: Not very well, I didn't think very good of it at all.

Q. Are you going to contest it?
COACH JACKSON: No, I was, I thought I was very -- I don't want to go there. I thought I was very conciliatory, tried to soft pedal it.

Q. Your comments?
COACH JACKSON: Yeah, my comments were. I didn't go through the litany of things that we certainly have over this series. But that's the league. That's the league for you, though. They'll come back and hammer you.

Q. Can you help me out, do you think a player hit by $25,000 fine, do you really notice something like that? I'll never know, so I need to know.
COACH JACKSON: I refuse to comment on that. I think the just thing to say is it doesn't matter if it was a $10 fine, it would still bother me. Parking tickets still bother me.

Q. You get parking tickets?
COACH JACKSON: No, my kids do, though. (Laughter) I refuse to pay them for them anymore, though.

Q. Coach, how much does the exertion of energy to win a big game like how Denver won a big game the last one, the Lakers the game before that were able to get their game in Denver, how much of that kind of can exhaust a team the next time around?
COACH JACKSON: I don't know. I think that there's a sense of like I've said before, the term "urgency" has been used when you lose. And you feel like your backs are against the wall and desperation comes into it.
I don't know about amount of energy. I think that can be summoned almost immediately in a situation. Because there was a time we would play back to back, like a Saturday afternoon, a Sunday evening game, in situations like this, in the second round or the third round, usually not in the finals. The players seem to come out and play really hard when it's back to back.

Q. Andrew's moments have been going slowly up in this series. Are you happier with the conditioning aspect where he is and how far does he have to go?
COACH JACKSON: Well, you know, some of it was about the game getting, the 10-, 12-point situation and Pau needed the rest. He's been playing heavy minutes. We needed to make a run. And he's perfectly capable of scoring in there.
He'll be a good relief hitter, so to speak, in the post. But Andrew still has an activity level which he knows he has to bring up in this series to please us as a coaching staff, where he's rebounding and active on the defensive end.

Q. Coach, two years in a row you find yourself in another physical series where there's been lots of chippy play. A year ago the team was sort of criticized for being soft. And now here we are again and it's down to a best 2 out of 3. How do you approach tonight in terms of the physical aspect, without it getting into your guys' heads? Is there a way you prepare for that, to deal with their physicality?
COACH JACKSON: We just talk about going to the ball, that's all. It's not about retribution or go hit somebody or, you know, not physical, it's about going and getting the ball. Whether it's loose on the rebounds and tips and preplay out there, just go get the basketball and make sure you're the aggressor on that end.

Q. Seems like throughout the playoffs there have been a lot of, whether it's flagrant or technicals, a lot of things called on the floor or not called on the floor and reviewed by the league and reversed, do you think there's a problem that the league and the officials just need to get everybody on the same page, not trying to make you lose another 25K, but --
COACH JACKSON: A few years ago when they came up with the flagrant fouls and they wanted to kind of get into it, one of the league officials, who I won't mention by name, but he's been in the league for almost as long as I've been around for 35 years, said you know that may not be a flagrant foul, it may not be a flagrant foul, but, hell, I'll call them all and let them sort it out back in the office.
That I understood. The idea of maybe not calling them and then being changed on the other hand, I don't know. It's one of those things I just don't know. As I said yesterday, we may need some candidates for Supreme Court Justices to be sitting in these situations, because there's so many judgments going on.

Q. Can touches for the big men be earned by doing other things, you get a rebound, you run the floor?
COACH JACKSON: That's the way guards are supposed to play. If a big guy --

Q. For a big guy?
COACH JACKSON: If a big guy covers your butt on a drive or he gets a rebound, runs the court well, you know, that's the way you learn how to play this game. Or else the big guys take the air out of the ball and tell the guards they can't dribble the ball anymore, they have to pass it. That's what we used to threaten the guards with, we'll take all the air out of the ball, now what are you going to do?

Q. You've gotten direct criticism in the past. Is that what you were doing the other day with this outburst by the referee?
COACH JACKSON: I hope so. God I hope so. That would be really good, wouldn't it?

Q. Is that the way you were planting?
COACH JACKSON: I'm a gardener. I like that analogy. Constantly (Laughter).

Q. You talk about your hopes. There's always this element of not knowing what you're going to get until you're out there. What are you looking for early?
COACH JACKSON: Well, we come out as a team and haven't established ourselves in a number of games in the playoffs.
And in the recent playoffs we've come out and a lot of times Kobe has taken an initiation, I'm going to go right at it. And previously a lot of times it was about getting everybody established on the floor.
We'd like to do that, because we know we're not going to win this thing with a one-man game. Everybody's going to have to pitch in.
So that's what we're trying to do in this situation. We have plenty of offense to run and we can get it done.

Q. Throughout Sasha's career, he's had a tendency a lot of times in smaller minutes to try to jam as much game as possible into those minutes. And during these playoffs his minutes have often gone down. Do you ever worry about fulfilling a self-fulfilling prophecy in terms of what you're looking for, just a vicious circle where you know how he's going to react?
COACH JACKSON: I haven't seen a team since maybe the '75 Golden State team that won a championship -- is that the right year? And they had 11 guys playing their 12-man roster. I haven't seen a team quite like that since that's been able to play consistent basketball. But they were able to find roles for all those players.
We're trying to find roles for 10 guys. And Sasha is one of our role players. And he has a role to play, and it's very important that he does that.
Smith got the better part of him in Game 4, but he's done a relatively good job defensively in getting into Smith and working on him on the defensive end. He has to take the shots because he's one of our free shooters, he's a guy that can shoot the ball.
But he has to settle in. He's got to settle down and not think that he's going to play 20 minutes because he hits a shot. His role is still going to be that 15-minute role.

End of FastScripts

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