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NBA WESTERN CONFERENCE FINALS: THUNDER v SPURSJune 4, 2012Scott BrooksSAN ANTONIO, TEXAS: Game Five Q. How have you gotten the guys to buy into making that extra pass? COACH BROOKS: Um, it's something that we talked about. We started talking about it two days ago. We talked about it all along. We talked about it. Every coach talks about it. Every coach talks about it in training camp everybody talks about defense, everybody talks about passing. We do the same. Our guys have done a good job getting better at it, but we understand that we have to keep getting better. It's not that we've done it the last two games 23 and 27 assists, all of a sudden we're the best passing team in basketball. We still have to work on it. We still have to get focused on spacing and not allow us to turn the ball over. But I think our guys have done a good job. Give them the credit. Give them the credit. They've really done a great job of moving the basketball. Q. Is it possible looking at all this tape of the Spurs that it influenced them? COACH BROOKS: I mean, there are sometimes that that can probably be the case. I think you have a chance to learn from your opponents as you're playing them. They're one of the best passing teams if not thee best this season. Just like we played Dallas last year, they were the best passing team. We understand that we have to be able to move the basketball, and it's not as simple as just giving the ball to a guy and saying go score. You have to be able to score through your offense, not just through your talent, and I think our guys have done a good job with that throughout the playoffs. Q. You won the last two games, but when you come back to this building, do you bring up the first three quarters or is it not good to harken back? COACH BROOKS: I usually don't do that. We just play forward. That's always been my philosophy. You learn from your last game, we moved on from that game a while back. We did play good basketball the first three quarters. In that fourth quarter, Ginobili got loose, and they scored a bunch of points, and we did not move the ball. I haven't mentioned it to them. We feel that we have a great opportunity tonight. We're focused on winning this game. Not focused on winning three games in a row. We're focused on Game 5. That's what we're doing. Q. Two things that drove you crazy during the year were turnovers and the lack of assists. Now it's a lack of turnovers and more assists. Have you pinpointed that yet? COACH BROOKS: If it would have happened earlier, I wouldn't look like this. No question. It's nice that we're not turning the ball over and we're passing the ball. It's an easy concept, but we still have to keep working on it. One of my coaches in my first year always told me just pass it to the same color jersey that you're wearing. It's such an easy thing to do, but sometimes it's difficult. There's great athletes coming at you, someone's guarding you, guys are moving. I think our guys are doing a great job of that. But it's not like the switch is on, and we can just keep it on. We have to keep trying to turn that switch on and make sure it's at a level that we have to be comfortable playing at. Q. It looks like Kevin has done a good job of involving his teammates and passing? COACH BROOKS: Well, Kevin has been good all year. His assists numbers have improved. His turnovers were high this year, but I've said many times he's a tremendous talent that works extremely hard. I thought his turnovers the last couple of years were attacking the basket, playing in a crowd. Those, to me, those are growth turnovers. You understand the game. The game becomes slower as you become a better player and you have more experience. But this year a lot of his turnovers were trying to find teammates, trying to find the little pocket pass like we talked about, the crosscourt pass, or just the drive and kick pass. Those are the turnovers that you can live with, because sooner or later those are going to dwindle down to a number that's respectable. I think in these playoffs, I think he sees that better, and he understands that it's helping us. It's helping Serge, it's helping Perk, and it's helping Nick. It's helping our guys like Thabo when he makes plays for others. Q. How advantage is leadership as far as trusting and believing in your teammates? COACH BROOKS: He's one of the guys that‑‑ every player I've played for or played with, they always say that. I also play with a bunch of guys that they it, but don't believe it. Kevin believes it. He knows that's how you have to be as a teammate. He's an incredible player, an outstanding person and teammate. But he understands to be a leader on this team, you have to do a couple of things. You have to be able to defend, because you don't want to be the guy that just wants to look for points. There have been a lot of those players in this league. But Kevin can score with the best of them ever. But he wants to be a great defender, and that's really helping us take our team to another level the last three years, and we're going to keep improving on that end because of Kevin. He works hard and continues to believe in what we talked about. Also, he works every day. He never has a bad day of practice because he just wants to shut it down. He gives us effort every day, and our guys see that. We all follow. Q. One of those cameras in Game 4 caught you talking to Kevin in the fourth quarter, just you and him. Something like take a shot, shoot the ball, something. Is that what you're telling the team one thing and telling Kevin something else alone or were you telling everybody? COACH BROOKS: No, I definitely don't tell everybody to take shots. I definitely don't do that. Q. Did you tell everybody else, "Shoot"? COACH BROOKS: I should start doing what Pop does, turn that mic off, huh? I talk to everybody honestly and fairly, whether it's Kevin or a guy that's going to play a lot of minutes for us. That's how I coach. I have conversations. I have fair conversations. I had a conversation with Kevin to shoot. There are times in the game when he has to shoot. There are times in the game when he has to pass. There are sometimes when you just have to make the right play, but he has the ability to force the issue and end up with a pretty good shot. I thought that was an important part of the game for him to be aggressive, look to score, look to get to a spot to score. And I thought he did a great job in those last six minutes of the game, finding an area of the floor that he feels comfortable catching it, and they have trouble defending it, because if you're on top of the key, it's hard to double team. Double team, those are easy passes, because you see the double team coming. You've got open shots and you can't get up there as quick. Kevin does a great job. There are times in the game that I tell him, Kevin, you shoot too much, you've got to pass the ball. He understands that too. He's coachable. He wants to improve every day. Q. You've got everybody in the arena that could sense it and see that he was in one of those zones. Did your players sense it too? Did you tell them let Kevin shoot? Did they just know it? COACH BROOKS: If you remember‑‑ yeah, we try to remember every play and every position and everybody's body language. Kevin got beat at a defensive possession. He was watching the ball. They shot the ball from behind that offensive tip. He got so down on himself. It's the most incredible thing. He got so down on himself after he scored like eight straight or ten straight in a row. Russell's getting in his ear, get up. Get up. We're going to run the same play again. To me, that's growth from our whole entire team. Russell seeing that he's down, getting him back in the same play. But it's the team knowing that Kevin had a hot hand, and we were trying to continue to get him the ball at the spots that he needs to get the ball. I thought that was a big moment from a growth standpoint, because we still have to keep working those areas. His experience coming to us one game at a time, and I think our guys have done a great job of taking it all in, internalizing it, and believing in what we're doing and getting better from it. I thought that was a big moment for the entire team. Q. Keeping with Russell, the fact that his points are down but assists are up in this series, is he getting it? Or does he get it more than we realize and we never give him enough credit? COACH BROOKS: I give Russell a lot of credit. I don't know what you guys feel, but that really is like the last thing that I'm really worried about. He gets it. He's improved a lot. We are not in this position the last four years without Russell Westbrook. The guy is a competitor. He plays with a lot of passion. He plays and practices every day. He knows that he has to keep getting better, and he has. Look what we've done. Kevin has led the league in scoring three years in a row. I don't not play Russell when Kevin's on the floor. They play together for their 38 minutes together. And he has put Kevin in position to lead the league in scoring. He's going to keep improving in a lot of areas, because he works hard. Q. He's not forcing things so much? COACH BROOKS: Yeah, good players force shots and good players make tough shots. He also understands that I like the fact that he is playing on the defensive end. You don't have a good shooting night, let's face it, we all want to shoot the ball well. When you don't have a good shooting night, it takes a little bit from your offense. A lot of times with young players it take as way from your defensive end. But it has not taken away he's chased down loose balls, and there is one other player in this league that can do that. He's defending, setting us up, getting us in our offense. Q. When you talk about growth with a team, it's been the case with many championship teams that have had to to go through a process and even failed some before they succeeded. Do you sense your team now has enough experience where it's broken through that and it's ready to take the next step? I mean, in terms of medley are they competent in that respect? COACH BROOKS: I think we are. I like what we've done. Being down 2‑0, we knew that we had to play much better. Adjustments needed to be made, but the biggest adjustment that needed to be made was we need to play better. We're playing against a good team that won a lot of games in a row. Our guys did that. We won the championship. That's what every team starts the year thinking that they're going to put themselves in a position to win. We feel like we're a lead basketball team, and we've never looked at our age. I don't give them an excuse and say oh, it's okay. You're only 20. It's okay, three years from now you'll only be 23. We don't do that. Because three years from now, Kevin's only 26. We feel like we have enough. But that being said, our window's not going to close after the season. We have a good group of guys that are going to continue to get better. Q. You mentioned the adjustments. Do you see anything from the last two games with Sefolosha and Parker to make the change coming out? COACH BROOKS: They're going to make a change? Q. No, that would make you want to change. COACH BROOKS: Oh. I think Thabo's done a good job. Even looking back I think Russell did the best job in the first game. That's the game that I thought we controlled Parker the best. In the fourth quarter, Ginobili goes nuts and we couldn't score, and they went crazy and moved the ball and made a bunch of shots. But Thabo's done a great job the last two games. Our bigs have done a great job. They deserve a lot of credit too, because it's not easy to guard the speed of his game. Our bigs have done a good job. When you're a 270‑pound guy trying to stop this point guard that's aggressive, quick, and crafty and has a great handle, it's not easy. But I give Perk, Serge and Nick a great respect that they've done their best doing it. And I thought they did a good job, along with Thabo. Q. (No microphone) their pick‑and‑roll, if you want to? COACH BROOKS: You're never satisfied, because you can't be. They come at you so many times and they set so many. They set them every time down the court, and they set them two or three times, four times in every possession. You can never say you're there because they can have a great pick‑and‑roll game tonight. Our job is to do the best that we can. Don't give them second shots, and make sure they take a lot of shots outside the paint. It's not easily said than done. They were a great three‑point shooting team. If they weren't a great three‑point shooting team, they'd be much easier to guard. But they can shoot threes, they can score in the paint, and they've got Duncan rolling and scoring at the block. Q. Do you count how many pick‑and‑rolls they do every game? COACH BROOKS: Couple of games they're in the high 80s. One game in the 90s. Last game they're in the low 70s. So we like it. That's still high. They were in that series they were in the 60s with the Clippers. FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports |
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