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NBA WESTERN CONFERENCE FINALS: THUNDER v SPURSJune 1, 2012Scott BrooksOKLAHOMA CITY, OKLAHOMA: Practice Day Q. Coach, tell us about your pick‑and‑roll philosophy going into that game last night, your pick‑and‑roll defense? COACH BROOKS: Our pick‑and‑roll defense was very good against probably the best pick‑and‑roll offense. Did a good job of getting into the ball, did a good job of being up into the ball with our bigs. That was the key, and our other three guys were involved in it. But it's a team defense. I thought everybody was active, everybody was engaged. A lot of times you put pressure on just the ball handler guarding the pick‑and‑roll. But everybody has to do their job and get involved, and they did. Perkins served to Nick, and the big it's a great job of getting up and helping Thabo and Russell and the pick‑and‑roll defenders. Q. Did you do more switching? It looked like you did a lot more switching last night than in Game 1? COACH BROOKS: We had our fair share. We had our fair share of switching. Q. How much was their pride hurt? Perk admitted his pride was hurt after Game 2? COACH BROOKS: We had some bad stretches there. We got down 22, and that hurts. We know we're never going to give up. We're always going to keep fighting. But we couldn't overcome a 22‑point deficit. We had to claw it to get down to 6. We didn't have enough in us to cut it even closer. Then Perk, I don't think Perk played well, and he understands that. Perk does have a lot of pride in his ability and what he brings to this team. We don't win games without Perk. He sets great screens. He's the anchor on the defensive end. He brings toughness. He has leadership. He came back and responded in that game, but I thought he was exceptional. He played every possession hard, with a lot of force. He was energized. When you have Parker and Ginobili coming at you, those aren't easy guys to stay in front of for a guard forward or a big. Q. Why was the switching so effective initially? COACH BROOKS: We just play defense. If it's a switch or a pick‑and‑roll defense, we stick with it. I don't know if it was effective. It worked at times. Q. What was the mindset of the guys today, just coming in and moving on to Game 4? COACH BROOKS: Great. We felt we had a good game last night. We're excited that we got the win, but it's time to focus for Game 4. We know that they're going to come out and play with great energy and effort. They're a great team. They won 20 games. They're not going to push the panic button after one loss. They're going to come out and play like they normally play, and we expect them to. We have to come out and play even better. That's what our goal is. That's our plan. That's our focus today. Then we'll see what happens. Q. You feel like you have to replicate last night's effort and then some? COACH BROOKS: You don't have effort in this league, you're not going to win. We always have effort. There are times we don't play well, and I thought after games 1 and games 2, we had to play better. We did last night. We played with great effort. We played well, and that's not easy to do. It's easy to play hard. It's easy to be in shape, but it's hard to play well. Our guys, the first two things happened. It probably added a third dimension as well. Q. You clogged it up a little bit, and kind of took away their ability to move the basketball. How much of that was X's and O's, and how much was that total commitment and possession? COACH BROOKS: It's a commitment on every possession. X's and O's are also a part of it, but it's everybody engage, everybody has the belief. It's not only the physical efforts. It's the mental effort. You need mental effort to play against this team. Because you don't do it every time, every possession, you're not going to win. You have to do it for 48 minutes, and it has to be consistent with all the guys involved. I thought our ability to make them not take a lot of shots, whether off the top of our pick‑and‑roll defensive coverage or just our team defense, they didn't get into the paint like they did in the first couple of games. FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports |
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