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NBA FINALS: HEAT v SPURSJune 11, 2014Erik SpoelstraMIAMI, FLORIDA: Practice Day Q.  Is there anything specific you can point to with Mario's struggles right now? Is it something you talk to him about or is he the type of guy that when it's going on, you leave him to his own devices to kind of figure it out? COACH ERIK SPOELSTRA: You want him to know we still have faith in him, trust in him and we need him. And he's been able to play through tough times and been able to bounce back. Look, he's not the only guy that's been struggling at some point, and the most important thing is you have an opportunity to help and impact a win in the next game. Q. When you looked at the defensive performance last night, did you see a lot of inattentiveness and maybe giving guys too much space? COACH ERIK SPOELSTRA: Little bit of everything. Pretty much all of the above. There is detail work, there is effort work, they had us on our heels. You have to give them credit. They played extremely aggressive. They played a great offensive basketball game. Q. How do you think Dwyane has defended in this series? COACH ERIK SPOELSTRA: It's not even‑‑ our defense isn't built like that with individual players. You have so many responsibilities within our team defense. You're reliant on each other to do your job and against a team like San Antonio, you have to do five, six, seven things each possession. Q. There's been some struggles during the regular season we're seeing again in this series. Defense not quite at the same level, little struggle at point guards and other things. Did you think you were beyond some of the problems that created such an uneven regular season? Is there a disappointment level that some of those things are coming back at such an important stage? COACH ERIK SPOELSTRA: No, it doesn't have anything to do with that right now. You build habits and you build toughness during the regular season. Right now it's about competition and trying to figure it out. For us it's about the next 24 hours trying to figure out how we can get Game 4. We did not play a good basketball game. All of us have owned that. It doesn't matter ultimately how many you lose by or what the game is like. You have to learn from it, move on. The next game is an opportunity, and you don't want to get caught up in all the wild swings and compound it and make it more than it is. Q. Fourth quarter game is pretty unusual, but they shot the ball in that quarter pretty much the same way they did last night in the first quarter as well. Have you guys been that far off? COACH ERIK SPOELSTRA: Well, it's a very competitive series, and it could swing either way. A possession can change the momentum of a quarter, of a game just like that. They played a great first quarter. They got us back on our heels and then from there didn't show the necessary mental toughness to do our job consistently throughout the rest of the game. Q. After a playoff loss, you guys have a process now. Is it something you fall into and everybody knows what they've got to do? COACH ERIK SPOELSTRA: Yeah, but you can't brush it aside. So there is a balance to it. It's one game. You don't want to get caught up and make it bigger than it is, but at the same time, you can't do that until you actually go through it and own the things that you need to do better, and then you move on. Tomorrow we'll move on. Q. Did you have an extra long session today? Is that why you're a little late today? COACH ERIK SPOELSTRA: Are we late? Yeah.  Normal film session, except a lot more to go through. Q. Coach, how crucial each loss is in The Finals, does the circumstances of Game 1 and the way the team came out in Game 3, does that make these losses even harder to take? COACH ERIK SPOELSTRA: Again, you don't want to get caught up in the wild swings of exaggeration between each game. It's competition. It's elite competition, so you have to figure out how you're going to win the next competition. The next competition is tomorrow night. We're not compounding it. A win tomorrow night, however we get the job done, now it changes, and you have to deal with that mentality and managing those emotions. You have to manage all of the emotions in a very competitive series. We went through the painful emotions today of watching the things that we need to correct, and tomorrow we have to put together our best foot forward to give ourselves our best chance to win. Q. Is that something you had to preach to your team to have short memory and move on to tomorrow? COACH ERIK SPOELSTRA: Well, we've been in situations enough that we understand it. Now, to have a short memory, you still have to go through it. So the last two hours was not about having a short memory. Q. After the game Mario was pretty hard on himself. He said that the team can't win with him playing the way he's playing right now. I know you guys have tried some different things to get him going. What is the next thing that you try? COACH ERIK SPOELSTRA: Yeah, we have trust in Rio. I don't want him to shoulder the full responsibility. This is a team game. We had enough breakdowns on both sides of the ball where defensively we weren't defending five men the way we were capable of, and offensively we weren't helping each other get in rhythm and get the type of shots that our guys need to get to get going. So we have trust in Rio, and we want him to be confident. Want him to be aggressive. He's a big part of what we do. Q. What is the next thing you do to try to work with him to get to where he at least wants to be? COACH ERIK SPOELSTRA: It's still team‑related. So trying to get somebody going is a team concept. We can't try to self will in this series. It takes five‑man basketball on both sides of the ball to be able to compete at this level. Q. LeBron's carried a huge load for his entire time in his career, but do you ever find yourself that maybe you rely on him too much? And what can you do to alleviate the burden he carries on a nightly basis? COACH ERIK SPOELSTRA: It's five‑man basketball. He has a lot of responsibilities. He understands that. It's 1 through 5 defensively. He has to create a lot of offense for us. Facilitate, be aggressive, attack, all of that. He wants all those responsibilities. Q. I understand owning it means taking responsibility, but what is that process like when you guys are in the film room? COACH ERIK SPOELSTRA: Yeah, it's painful. It's frustrating. It's painful. You have to go through all those emotions of seeing the things that we could have done better. Q. Is it pointed out by the coaching staff or are players active in talking about what they didn't do? COACH ERIK SPOELSTRA: It depends on the situation. This was a film session between myself and the team. Q. In the first couple of games of this series and in the last five games prior to last night, Bosh was very active and averaging over 21 points a game. Last night he only got 12 touches. What did your look at the film tell you about that? COACH ERIK SPOELSTRA: A lot of one‑pass, two‑pass possessions. I mean, at the end of the day, if we had half the turnovers, half the unforced turnovers, as poorly as we played, and I'm not giving ourselves an out on that defensively, that is about as poorly as we can play defensively. But if we just have half the turnovers, we give ourselves a chance to play for it in the last three or four minutes. And we would have had a good chance to play for it. But we had too many empty possessions. With the 20 turnovers, 10‑plus that were in our minds unforced, those lead to guys not being in rhythm, and the ball not moving an extra chance for somebody to get an extra opportunity. Then 37 possessions where there were zero, one or two passes, where we're really not working the offense and working a good defense to get what we want. CB is a recipient a lot of times of the ball movement. He has to do many so different things for us without getting play calls, but we still expect him to be aggressive, but it's reliant on other guys also to move the ball. Q. Last year when you didn't have Norris Cole or Mario Chalmers on the floor, you went with a no‑point guard lineup. You had almost always Mike Miller on the floor as that extra ball handler. Now that he's not on the team, do you still feel as comfortable going to a no‑point guard lineup when those two guys are struggling? COACH ERIK SPOELSTRA: No, we feel comfortable with whatever lineup. And that is the thing we've said about this team. Whoever we have out there, you've got to make it a positive. We're working the rotation, trying to keep fresh bodies out there, we're playing point guard basketball. We're also playing some minutes of non‑point guard basketball. Either way, we have to figure it out. FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports |
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