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NBA FINALS: HEAT v SPURSJune 4, 2014Erik SpoelstraSAN ANTONIO, TEXAS: Practice Day Q.  I know you say it's a new season and a new journey, but considering how little you played San Antonio in the two blowouts, how much do you go back to school on what happened last year and how much of what happened last year in The Finals is part of your game‑planning for this series? COACH ERIK SPOELSTRA: There will be some things that we can anticipate but there will probably be a lot of things that will be different, and you have to go into it with an open mind of competition and trying to figure it out. Certainly our staff and all the players have gone through the regular season and the games they've had in the playoffs already this year, those may or may not be relevant. They are different styles of basketball but you have to go through all of that. The most important thing is being open to the competition and what it brings. Q. You talked about this last week and then Pop just mentioned there seems to be a trend across the league right now of instability and impatience with organizations, and once again these two teams, which are two of the stable teams in the league, are back. Talk about the value of that. COACH ERIK SPOELSTRA: That goes without saying. That's a real unfortunate, tough trend that's going on right now with coaching. It's disturbing. When you have that type of instability and consistent instability, it's tough to win. It's tough to win in an environment. It's tough to create a culture that has accountability that will get through tough times. If there's always going to be change. There will never be any kind of accountability. One thing that's good about this series is you have two organizations that have incredible stability. They've been there forever, all their people. All of us are going on finishing, it's tough to say, but the majority of us are finishing our 19th year with Mr.Arison and Pat. We've been through a lot. People remember these times but we also remember the 15‑win seasons, the 25‑win season. We've had some tough times but we've been able to get through that and work through it. Q. LeBron mentioned at times he was hesitant last year in The Finals trying to figure out the way they were defending him and things like that. Do you expect him not to have that type of the same response this year because he knows probably how they're going to defend him and he's seen it before? COACH ERIK SPOELSTRA: We'll see. He has a great way of figuring it out. If that's the scheme, then we have to find a way to conquer it. If it's making open shots, there is a lot worse problems you can have, especially at this level of competition. Q. Spo, he often talks about motivation and I know that's a huge part of what you do is try to find new and improved ways to keep motivating these guys. Is there anything left that you can do with him that's going to fit that motivation role going into this series with all that's on the line here? COACH ERIK SPOELSTRA: Yeah, motivation can manifest itself in a lot of different ways. It doesn't have to be with all the conventional noise and storylines that people think of. Sometimes it might just be level of preparation. Q. Has Pop played any part in your career even in the smallest of ways, maybe something he did that you saw from a distance? What's your perspective on him and in the scope of the coaching ranks throughout time and not just championships but with what he brought to the league. COACH ERIK SPOELSTRA: I have great respect for Pop. Obviously he's a pillar in this profession. You don't know where excellence, you know, has influence on a young coach, you don't. My mentors are the people I've worked for, the people I've been with for a long time, Coach Riley, Stan Van Gundy, probably the two biggest, Rick Adelman, Jack Ramsay. These are the people that I grew up in this profession with, but certainly when you see a level of excellence that he's done over the years, that's a great example. Q. Have you seen anything over this season or even the last series against the Thunder that the Spurs are doing differently or is it the same old Spurs? COACH ERIK SPOELSTRA: It can be tricky if you compare one series to another; there are different styles of play and different personnel. And ultimately a series will take on a life of its own. You try to draw from experiences that we had last year, things we can anticipate but, again, you have to be open. You have to be open to the changes that are inevitable as the series goes on. Q. Just wanted to know, the Spurs have had a lot of success in the past keeping minutes down for their key players. This year you guys made a concerted effort with Dwyane along the same lines. Can you talk about that? Did you take anything from them on that? How did you go about that process? COACH ERIK SPOELSTRA: It's well documented. We have had a maintenance program for the last two or three seasons, late in the season, but this season was different. Dwyane was coming off a procedure, OssaTron therapy for his knee. We knew he wouldn't be available, we knew he wouldn't be at a top health level at the beginning of the season, but we wanted him to be available for training camp, whatever that meant. Might be a day, two days, he ended up doing a lot more than we thought, but we knew he would have to manage it, he wouldn't be able to play 14 or 15 games in that first month, and our objective was to get him healthier and stronger as the season went on. We put together a program; if he couldn't pass a series of tests, then he wouldn't play that night. It was simple as that. We would all look smarter to say it was built for this moment, it was built to get better and build him up, coming off of a procedure to do it intelligently and also to do it with flexibility. The back‑to‑backs were not something that we would be able to do early on in the season and as the season went on he got stronger and healthier. The only setback he had was the hamstring. Q. Would you agree he's in a better place with his body than he was this time last year? COACH ERIK SPOELSTRA: He is and we talk about it all the time, and I mention it to him, you just have to find a way. Is he feeling better about himself physically this year than last? Yes. Did he have a big impact on last year's series even when he had to do 24 hours around the clock of treatment? He still had a big impact, particularly at the end. Dwyane is a competitor. He knows that no matter what happens, that he has a chance to impact the game. Q. I know your philosophy on this but why was it important for you to separate winning one championship from winning three consecutive championships? And how were you able to convince players not to look at it that way? COACH ERIK SPOELSTRA: Well, we've had a lot of practice. Nobody wants to hear about it but we talk about if all the time, we are a process team and we live by the process, not by the result. If you're doing the process the right way, eventually the result will hopefully take care of itself but that's not guaranteed. So the only thing you can focus on is the now. Our first year everything was about anything but the now. It was about jumping ahead, and then when we failed, it was about not living in the past of that failure. It developed some mental toughness for us. When you talk about legacy and context, when you talk about all that stuff, that doesn't win you a game. It doesn't. You have to go through the process of building habits and then go through the process of competition and figuring it out. Then when it's all said and done, you know, everybody can look back on it and see what the result was. Q. As you said, players find motivation in so many different ways. Tim Duncan made his comment at the end of Game 6, "we're going to do it this time." When we asked your players about it, LeBron said, "I can tell Tim doesn't like us." And Chris Bosh said, "I'm going to use that as motivation in the series." What do you think about the way your players responded, whether or not you believe it or not? COACH ERIK SPOELSTRA: Doesn't matter. One way or another, it doesn't matter. It will be decided between those four lines and who plays the best most consistent basketball puts themselves in the best chance to win. Q. After all the stuff Lance Stephenson said and did a week ago they didn't react at all. Why do you think they reacted‑‑ COACH ERIK SPOELSTRA: It really doesn't matter. Everything can get taken way out of context and that's why we try to limit the noise and the exaggeration. Look, we have a job to do, we understand you guys have a job to do, that has nothing to do with anything. THE MODERATOR: Thanks, Coach. FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports |
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