	products recent interviews FastScripts archive about ASAP Sports

Our Clients:

Browse by Sport

Find us on

Subscribe to RSS

Click to go to
Asaptext.com

View our
e-Brochure

NBA WESTERN CONFERENCE FINALS: THUNDER v MAVERICKS

May 25, 2011

Scott Brooks

DALLAS, TEXAS: Game Five

Dallas Mavericks Â– 100
Oklahoma City Thunder - 96

SCOTT BROOKS: I thought that was a heck of a basketball game. That's what you want. We wanted this game to be a tough, physical game, and it was. I'm proud of our guys. They battled for the entire 48 minutes. We came up short. It's unfortunate, but I have nothing but praise for our team. They battled.
I give Dallas a lot of credit. They're a very good basketball team. Rick Carlisle is a heck of a coach. Their staff is -- Dwane, Terry, Coach Heard, one of the best coaches of all time, great organization. We're not ashamed at how we played. We fought through every game. We gave ourselves a chance to win. We came up short a few games, but I thought they deserve a lot of credit. They played great basketball. They're a heck of a team.

Q. Considering how you played -- how you lost Game 4, did you know you'd come out and play this tough in Game 5 or were you just hoping?
SCOTT BROOKS: Well, absolutely. There's not a -- nothing about going into this game that I was fearful of. I knew our guys would leave everything they had on the floor, and that's what they do. That's how they're wired. That's how they're built. They love the game. They respect what the game is about. They respect what we have to go through as an organization, as a team, and they work through it every single day.
As the coach of this team, I couldn't ask for 15 men better than what they've shown me all year. They're committed to the game. They're committed to each other. That was a tough loss, our last home game, no question. We had a lot of things that we could have done better, but they never got down. They never used any of the things that did not go our way as an excuse. They came out focused. I really believe that started from our shoot-around this morning.

Q. It also looked like you didn't get a whole lot of luck at the end of the game. You had some stops, you had some offensive rebounds they got, tips, saves that could have gone either way. It was really tough in that category, was it not, the 50/50 balls?
SCOTT BROOKS: Yeah. Sometimes those are the breaks of the game. You make a shot that keeps the momentum going. You miss a shot, they get an opportunity and get out and run.
It was a heck of a ballgame. They battled just as hard as we battled. Unfortunately, somebody has to lose this game, but I can't complain with anything that we did. We fought for 48 minutes. We played tough for 48 minutes. We played together, and we played for each other for 48 minutes, and that's what basketball teams do, and we're a heck of a basketball team.

Q. You made a decision to go small and use both Russ and Eric out there at the same time, a line-up you really haven't used much, I don't think at all in the Playoffs. Talk a little bit about that. What were you hoping to play to there?
SCOTT BROOKS: I knew that we had -- in order to beat this team we had to keep moving their feet, and we put as much quickness on the floor as possible, and I thought it was -- I thought it gave us a chance to win this game.
I thought all of our guys -- it's a smaller lineup, but with Kevin as a forward, he's 6' 11", so it's really not that small of a lineup. And Russell is as athletic as any guard in this league, but I thought the line-up gave us quickness and it gave us a chance to really drive by them and create opportunity towards the basket, and we were looking to get opportunities to use our speed and use our quickness to get around the rim and get some fouls.

Q. The story line with some will be that you had the lead late in the game and couldn't hold onto it once again. You played so well with only six turnovers for so long and then had seven in the fourth quarter. Can you address some of those issues?
SCOTT BROOKS: Well, that's something that you don't want to turn the ball over. We want to do a better job of taking care of the ball. Two years ago or three years ago we led the league in turnovers, and every year they've gotten better, and that's what we want to continue to do as a team.
Some games they sneak up on you. Unfortunately, we had -- I didn't realize we had seven. I thought we had like five, but we always want to get a shot on the basket at all times, and with the seven turnovers, those are tough. But like I said, we still had our chance, we still had our chances to win the game.

Q. You have four players that are 22 years old or younger. What do you personally see for the future of the Oklahoma City Thunder?
SCOTT BROOKS: Next year when they're 23, they're still going to be young. We're not going to use it as an excuse. We all signed up to play this game as NBA players, and you have to take pride in what you do because it's not a hobby. It's our life. This is what we do. This is what we believe in.
We work every day to get better, and I know our guys; they improve all the time. They're real committed to each other, never been on a team other than my high school team that we had a closer group of guys and they are all the same age and they're all fighting to get better. They get along, and that's very rare. You have a very -- very rare you have an entire team that are fighting to get better and fighting for minutes, but they always cheer each other on.
You see our bench. They're always into the game cheering the five guys that are on the floor, no matter what five there are. I'm proud of what they've done. We're just ten minutes from our loss, so it's tough to talk about our future right now, but it's obviously very important that we continue to get better.

Q. After you get over this defeat and tying into some of the things you just said, how will you look back and reflect on the season? Will you still consider it a successful season or will you consider it a season that came short?
SCOTT BROOKS: Well, there's no doubt, we're no different than 29 other teams in this league. We want to win a championship. We respect the process that it takes to win one, and our guys do the same thing; they respect the heck out of the game.
They know that they have to work extremely hard every day. You can't skip steps. I don't know how soon we were going to get there, but I can tell you this: That guys are not going to hope to get there. They're going to work to get there. They're focused on hitting every day on the practice floor as a day of improvement, a day of work. We have a good future if we continue to -- our mindset is in the right place, and I know the guys as well as anybody; they're not going to change. They're not going to change.
55 wins in the regular season, winning a Playoff series, winning a second Playoff series and fighting for five games and having a chance to win a few other ones, it's a good year. It's a very good year. It's a year that I'm proud of as a coach. But we all have to get better, including myself. I will evaluate myself and work this summer to get better going into next year, and I expect the same thing out of all of our guys.

Q. You talk a lot about learning and getting better each and every day. What specifically from this series do you hope your guys take away from it and learn from the way Dallas played?
SCOTT BROOKS: Well, our guys, I'll tell you, I like to think that I do a pretty good job coaching them. But I really believe they do a good job of helping me coach them. I learn as much from them as they learn from me. I've figured out ways to get them better, but they help me figure out ways to get them better.
This group, I couldn't be more satisfied to be their coach because they give -- I believe in work. You've got to get better on the practice floor. And we work every day in our shoot-arounds, and it's important to get better even in our shoot-arounds and in our film sessions. I love what they're about. I love the focus they give me and our staff and couldn't ask for a better group of guys that are committed to each other and committed to the team and committed to our city.

FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports

ASAP Sports, Inc. | T: 1.212 385 0297