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NBA EASTERN CONFERENCE FINALS: HEAT v PACERSMay 27, 2014Erik SpoelstraINDIANAPOLIS, INDIANA Q. Any Bird update to this point? COACH ERIK SPOELSTRA: No. He's here. He's actually in the weight room right now. So we'll see. Q. He's going, obviously? COACH ERIK SPOELSTRA: Yeah, we'll determine that all right now. We'll figure out where he is in the next hour or so. Q. Erik, is that pretty consistent with what he's been doing for a couple of games, maybe a couple of weeks now? It seems like he's been favoring the leg, one or the other? COACH ERIK SPOELSTRA: No, this is something new. This is when he and Dwyane collided on that one possession, and he came up limping in the first half. He was able to play through it in the second half, so this is something different. He's the human bruise, so he has a lot of different things going on all over his body, but he's been able to play through all of that. He's a tough guy. We all know that. He plays through pain. But you have to understand the difference between pain and injury. This is something that, if you have no mobility in your thigh from a deep contusion, you can't play even though you think you might be able to. Q. You always say closing out a team is the toughest‑‑ one of the toughest things. Why is that the case when you've got a team with their backs against the wall to get that final win? COACH ERIK SPOELSTRA: Well, naturally, you're going to get incredible urgency and desperation coming from their side. Their backs are against the wall, ands that the only thing you have left is to play as if you have no tomorrow. And that's something that you not only have to try to match, you have to try to exceed it. And that's the human condition, a collective challenge to be able to get to that point. For us, I want to focus on trying to get to our best game, not about closing them out, not about moving on, not about any of that, just compartmentalize, and can we push forward to have our best game of the series? Q. Why has your team been successful over the last several years in closeout games, getting that job done? COACH ERIK SPOELSTRA: I don't know. I think part of that is perspective, understanding how hard it is to beat a team and how hard it is, through experience, to get to that last game and how competitive it usually is. Usually, you learn things through experience. So our team has gained some maturity over the years. Q. How does a team learn to control only what‑‑ to think about controlling only what it can control? Like Game 1, there was the huge free‑throw disparity, and LeBron pinned it pretty solely on you guys' shoulders, saying you guys wound up in the paint too much. He kept the focus on you guys, not the proverbial complaining about calls, that sort of thing. Is that a trait that's learned, just control what you do? COACH ERIK SPOELSTRA: You have to. You have to work at it. That's a perfect example, that game, it had nothing to do with the disparity, that game. We did everything wrong that you could possibly do wrong. We didn't bring a kind of competitive disposition. We didn't play well. So in a series, you have to try to figure out what you can do better, what's real, what's not real, what you can control, what you can't control. It's a great discipline to try to get to that point. Q. Erik, what do you think when you hear the other team you're playing in the series complain about the officiating to the degree that a player gets on the podium last night and talks about home cooking? COACH ERIK SPOELSTRA: I don't care about any of that. I just know it's going to be a great challenge on the road. I want us to push forward to have our best game. These games are always tough, that element of when your back is against the wall, you're going to get a great effort and a great focus on their part. From our experience, many of these games we've been down in the fourth quarter, and you just have to find a way and dig through and give yourself the best chance at the end. So we're expecting a great battle tomorrow on the road, probably a great environment. All these things you want as a competitor but you know is going to be a great challenge. Q. Erik, as a coach, you're probably never really satisfied with the way you're playing overall, but how do you explain this team getting better incrementally each step of the playoffs so far, up to the point where Bosh played his best game last night? COACH ERIK SPOELSTRA: You try to work at it. You try to own performances when you're not up to where you think you can be. It takes a collective honesty about it and just working it, trying to work to improve within a series. But, look, it's competition. Sometimes you get better. Sometimes you don't. Sometimes the other team is coming right back at you and you get knocked back. Ultimately, what we say all the time is you're trying to crack the code. You're trying to figure out the series as it goes on. Ideally, as you see things over and over, hopefully, you get better with it and find out a different way that may not have been realized when the series started that comes to the forefront, and we take pride in that. A lot of series we have, but some series we haven't. Either way, we've got to figure it out. We talk about it as the series goes on and try to get better. Q. When they went on the mini run last night and made it from 23 to like 12 or 11, whatever it was, was that just a rough couple minutes? They just made some shots? Or was there a breakdown or something? COACH ERIK SPOELSTRA: Yeah, I think that‑‑ there was a four‑minute stretch where our offense and execution, we actually had slippage in that area. So we took a couple of quick shots where they were able to run out and get right back into it with a couple of easy ones. Then a couple of possessions where we didn't get the types of shots we wanted or didn't really work it. But I like the way we responded after that. The last four minutes, there was much better execution, much better focus. So it wasn't just the defensive end. They were scoring a lot of easy baskets, way too easy, but I think there are a handful of those that came from poor offensive execution. Q. I know you went back with Ray into the game, but was there any residual with what happened to Ray? COACH ERIK SPOELSTRA: He's in there getting treatment. We'll see how he feels tomorrow. Today is exclusively a treatment day for him. He won't do anything active. Q. Anything else regarding injuries? COACH ERIK SPOELSTRA: Not that I know of, but we're in the Eastern Conference Finals, so I don't ask how guys are feeling. I can only imagine. Q. But you're fine? COACH ERIK SPOELSTRA: All right. Thank you. FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports |
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