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NBA WESTERN CONFERENCE FINALS: NUGGETS v LAKERSMay 22, 2009Phil JacksonDENVER, COLORADO: Practice Day Q. Can you draw comparisons in the series going into Denver compared to the last series? COACH JACKSON: A little bit of a similarity. But the first game, second game win/loss, that's a flip-flop. I think that this game was decided on last 29 seconds of the game. That's a little bit different, too. Stat sheets, as even as could be. However, we're going to have to go in and win on a home court and play better basketball without fouling, which is always hard to do on a visitor's court. Q. You pulled out Andrew four minutes into the second half and you didn't put him back in, kind of suggests that you don't have a lot of confidence that you can get to your two big guys, Pau and Andrew, in tandem and use your height advantage. How do you feel about it? And is it turning out problematic? COACH JACKSON: I don't know. We'll see what this next game brings. But the activity level that they generated with a small lineup of Andersen, Kleiza, Carmelo and Smith and Billups changed our hand a little bit in the start of the fourth quarter, and came out there and that's normally Andrew's rotation time to go back in, in the fourth quarter. That really put a whole different twist on what we wanted to do. And they had an advantage obviously with Kobe getting the fourth foul and situations like that where we had to speed up our lineup more than outside the lineup. Q. Are you concerned you're bending the match more to them than they are to you? COACH JACKSON: No. I'm not that concerned about it. Q. What do you think the major like difference, if you have to implement more to make the series go better? COACH JACKSON: You know, maybe one. But these are both very close games. It's not like we gotta come out of the ocean just because we lost this ball game. We had the game. We lost our shot to win the game, obviously, on a couple plays down the stretch. But we're okay. We're going to play outright. What we have to do is get more physical with this team, and that's a hard thing. It's a physical basketball club. I don't mean physical in the sense of reacting to their physical nature, but just being able to play through a physical game without letting it affect our cuts, our activity level, what we'd like to do in our offense. So we keep motion going and to jam up the cutters. We're not being -- we're not able to keep the movement going that facilitates our offense. Q. There is so little margin for error. What's the role for you in terms of your rotation in terms of being efficient, loyalty, trust, familiarity with the players, predictability, that kind of thing, what do you see more? COACH JACKSON: I don't know if I'll answer that question. I don't think it's necessary to answer it. I don't think I have to explain myself on that. I think I'll just step by that one. Q. Strategy on the road, a win on the road, any other type of strategy type thing that you can play with differently on the road? COACH JACKSON: Well, you definitely know that you're going to have to play a little tighter game turnover-wise. You can't be quite as loose. 3-point shots, can't get involved in any 25, 10 3-point shot games. Gotta be tight. Spacing has to be tighter. Dramatize the spacing in this game. And the activity level has to be better. Those are two things offensively we have to do. Q. What do you think of the 16 straight wins on their the home court, against teams that didn't make the playoffs, and your tenure here, knowing how Sacramento was, to win up there; you draw comparisons with what Denver is doing right now? COACH JACKSON: Yeah, they're really good on their home court, no doubt about it. Q. What were you thinking when you saw that one play where Chauncey threw the ball behind Kobe's back and what did you say to Kobe afterwards about that? COACH JACKSON: We didn't even discuss it. I just said seeing the ball's the primary thing you do on defense. That's your primary requirement, your ball/man type of philosophy. Seeing the ball's really important. And I know his focus, because it was tight in the quarter, in the half, the clock's down. It's going to help with Carmelo. Q. Do you remember being affected by the altitude in Denver; is that a factor? COACH JACKSON: I think they're affected by it. It's not a factor that's going to change the outcome of the game. They've been here for four or five days. They're going to be affected, too. Your body just changes like that, I think, in a period of 36 or 48 hours. Q. George Karl made the observation that the four finalists are very close together. Do you subscribe to that? COACH JACKSON: In what terms are they close together? Q. You know -- COACH JACKSON: Talent-wise. They should be. If you have 30 teams, four teams should be pretty darn close together. I mean, otherwise you'd say that the talent level of this league, there's not much parity in it. But, yes, they're a pretty talented team. Q. Before the season or mid-season going into post-season everybody would have said that, people would say Orlando over Boston. Wouldn't have Denver in there. Is Denver a true one of the four? Are they up there with you? COACH JACKSON: They are certainly here. If they can play their style of game, they're very effective. End of FastScripts |
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