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NBA WESTERN CONFERENCE FINALS: THUNDER v SPURSJune 5, 2012Scott BrooksOKLAHOMA CITY, OKLAHOMA: Practice Day SCOTT BROOKS: It's a great crowd. It's fun to see them come out support our guys. Our guys love it. You never get tired of that. As long as they're cheering. It was great to see them. They're out there, I don't know how many people, but there was a lot of people out there. Q. I know you say you always want to handle stuff the same, not get too high, not get too low. But in a circumstance like that don't you kind of want them to know how high they're going right now and let that parlay into the next game? SCOTT BROOKS: Well, you've been around me for four years, you can probably answer the question yourself. Really, it's not something that we just say, we believe in it. It's one game, one day, and you have to focus on that. I mean, it's always the first of four in the series. We have three games, we have one more to go. We have a great opportunity. We're on our home floor, but that doesn't guarantee automatic victory. They're not going to give us the game. They're not just going to say we lost three in a row, we're going to give in. We know we have a tough challenge ahead. We know we have a great opportunity, although we just have to play with the same energy, the same force, the same determination that we did the last few games. But it's always been that way with our guys. Our guys really believe in work and they believe in doing it every day. Q. What kind of effort, what kind of game do you expect to get from the Spurs tomorrow night? SCOTT BROOKS: The same. You know, they're a good team. They're talented, they're deep, they have great experience. They're going to play hard like they always do, and we're going to play hard like we always do. Both of us are trying to figure out ways to play better, and we've done a good job with that the last few games. We have to continue to try to find different ways that we can score, different ways that we can stop them from scoring. They're a talented team. They have a lot of weapons. But we also do. Q. The last three years people like Kelly have been critical of your half court offense, but they're kind of critical about the isolations that you sometimes run with Kevin and Russell and James, but now analysts are saying that might be the key to you winning it all. Why are they all over the map on that? SCOTT BROOKS: I haven't heard any of that. Really, you know, there's always time that you have to‑‑ it takes time to work on things, and it takes time to improve on different parts of the game. I think our guys have done a good job of improving the last three or four years on parts of the game that we feel are very important, and that's the defensive end. And I thought this year defensively we had another great step. Now, offensively it's always a work in progress. There's a lot of moving parts that have to really come together at the same time, and I really believe that it has been. It's still not where we all want it to be. You're never satisfied. But the criticism? I don't really concern myself with that. I've played in this league a lot of years, and a lot of people criticized me that I shouldn't be playing, but you do your job. You won't worry about what they do, you do what you can do and you worry about what you can do and you try to get it better. Just like with Russell; he's had criticism, but it never bothers him and it's never bothered me and it's never bothered our team, and our half‑court offense the same way. It's never as easy as people think, just set a screen and get a guy open or go to the basket. If it was that easy, everybody would be doing it and scores would be in the high 100s. Q. But now you're getting credit. SCOTT BROOKS: I'm not going to take that, either. I'm going to keep doing my job, and our players are going to continue to stay focused, and we're going to keep watching film, keep getting better, keep getting on the practice floor and keep working on it. But it's nice that people do see that we have improved, but we're not like waking up in the morning and the first thing we're reading is your column saying that we're doing a good job. But I appreciate that if you are saying those things (laughing). But we know we have to improve. We should get better. We should continue to improve. We never use that as an excuse, but there is a fact of the matter, if the guys are young guys, then they should get better and they will get better because they work extremely hard and they care about each other. Q. Do you put last night behind you and does that come naturally to them? SCOTT BROOKS: I don't know if it comes naturally but we've kind of talked about it through the years that you have to. You can't get too high, you can't get too down, you just have to focus on staying in the moment, and our guys have always done a good job with that. I believe that they‑‑ they do a great job of just really staying in the moment and playing every day as it's the most important day, and going into Game 6, it's the most important game.  We're not worried about going into Game 7, we're not worried about the next series, we're worried about playing good basketball tomorrow night on our home floor. Game 6 is all that matters to us. It's nothing else. We're just focusing on Game 6. We're not putting more pressure. The only pressure that we always have on ourselves is play as hard as you can and play for your teammates. That's not going to change, and that's the only pressure I put on our guys. Q. There might be more expectations whether you're playing on the road or whether you're playing a team that's on a winning streak, maybe there wasn't as much expected of your guys, but now that you are here there are more expectations. What does that do to the mindset? SCOTT BROOKS: Well, definitely it changes the outside perception, but I think our guys are really‑‑ they have really high expectations of themselves individually and with our team. We don't talk about it. We don't pound our chest. We don't tell everybody how good we are. We feel that our worth is through our work, and if we continue to work hard and we continue to play together, we're going to have some good results. And the expectations always have been there for us. When we were losing a lot of games early, we were still trying to win those games. It wasn't like we're trying to go 3 and 29 and just have a good foundation so we can always look back on it and say, well, that was some tough times we overcame. Our guys have always thought that they can win and they're going to continue to think that. But they really enjoy playing hard and playing through the process of getting better, and they know if they do that the wins are going to come. Q. When you found out that Ginobili was starting, was it as simple as Russ, you've got Ginobili now instead of Green or was there a chain reaction to anything? SCOTT BROOKS: Well, I kind of anticipated that that might happen because it has happened in the past with the Spurs. They've changed their lineups before. But it didn't change our thinking, our thinking that we had to guard a very good player like we have to guard whoever we're guarding. And we know Ginobili is one of their most competitive winners in this league they've ever seen. At either end of the floor he really gets after it and makes winning plays constantly. He has a knack for making big shots, he has a knack for making a big play with a pass and he has a knack for stealing the basketball. I thought Russell did a good job on him and he still had a lot of points, and they definitely weren't all against Russell. He had them in transition, a lot of them. But they have a good team, and we knew that Ginobili is a big part of their success and we had to do a good job of stopping him, but he had a good game last night. Q. What do you think another win in this series would mean to this city? SCOTT BROOKS: We just focused on winning the game. Obviously it would be a great win for everybody involved, and our fans are as involved as any fans in this league. I don't know if they‑‑ I don't think they cheer for our guys, I think they embrace our guys, and you can see it, you can feel it, and the energy in the building is because the players work hard. They're talented, they're athletic, but they're workers. And you want to have that combination. You just don't want to be a talented, athletic, fun team. We want to be a good team. We want to be a blue collar team. We want to be a scrappy team. And I think that our guys do that. Kevin is as talented as anybody in this league, but he gets in there, mixes it up. He's on the floor. He's taking‑‑ he's not taking charges, but he's getting to his spot, and he's blocking shots. But our guys do a great job of doing the dirty work and doing the little things and making winning basketball plays. But it would be great for the city, be great for our organization, be great for our fan base. Everybody is excited about the game tomorrow, but still, we have to focus on playing good basketball to beat this team. Q. How loud do you think it'll be tomorrow night? SCOTT BROOKS: I mean, I just don't think it can get much louder than it has been. I don't think they're sandbagging it at all (laughing). They've been good every‑‑ the regular season they're good, and in the Playoffs they take it to another level. The first year was‑‑ it's hard to beat that, that crowd, the excitement. Even when we lost in Game 6, they stayed after for, I don't know, 20 minutes cheering our guys and nobody wanted to leave the floor. But it's‑‑ I can't imagine it being much louder than it has been. FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports |
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