You do not have the correct version of the Flash Player Plugin. Click here to get it.
 |
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
The great news is that we won the game. Hats off to the way both teams battled. We’ve come a long way in the area of mental toughness and that is what I am most proud of tonight. Dirk, Stack and Howard are warriors and I can go on and on down the line. This wasn’t our best game and take your hat off to the Spurs, they made some nice adjustments. This is going to be a tough series. They were fortunate in Game 1 for the ball to go their way and they won by two and we were fortunate enough tonight that the ball bounced our way and we won by one. On the fourth quarter: Both teams’ offense really clicked and guys were making strong moves, getting to the basket. We are happy to get the win, but we had a lot of breakdowns. Hopefully things that are correctable. On the Josh Howard stop: The ball got away from him a couple times at the end, but he had a big stop. Everyone wants to talk about how when he scores 20 or more, we win games, but with him getting him that stop and turnover for us I think that is bigger than him scoring points. These are the games I am searching for to see how mentally tough we are and I thought win or lose we did some strong minded stuff tonight. On Devin Harris: Devin was one of our better defenders. We have a bunch of guys that can cover a lot of ground defensively. They drove us quite a bit tonight and got inside our defense and we have to do a better job.
How’s the ankle? It stiffened up pretty good. I thought I rolled it pretty nicely. Once I planted, that’s usually when you have all your weight on your leg so it’s going to be pretty sore. I’ll stay up tonight and ice, ice tomorrow and we only have 48 hours until the next game. I’ll just do lots of treatments and be ready for Monday. How did this compare to other ankle injuries you’ve had? Well, it’s up there, but a least I was able to finish the game. Obviously it was a big win and like I said earlier, for me to miss a playoff game it’s got to be pretty bad. Talk about the pass you made to Stackhouse towards the end of the game? I saw Parker on me so I took it one way and wanted to spin in the lane and try to finish in the lane and then I saw three guys charging over to my side. It was kind of a tough pass over to Stack because the spacing wasn’t great, but he made a heck of finish in there. He kind of jumped into Horry, and laid it up and it went in. Down the stretch, I think both teams played great offense. There weren’t a lot of stops going on. We were just going back and forth. It was a great playoff game to be a part of. Devin was great. He made a lot of free throws that were big for us. It was a heck of a ballgame.
Talk about getting this win? It was a big win for us. There are definitely a lot of ways that we can get better in situations like that at the end of the game. It just was a hard fought victory by us. We knew it was going to take that kind of effort to beat this team. They’re the champions. You can’t just beat the champs; you have to knock them out. We’ve got another at home and we have to take care of business. Talk about the last play on defense against Ginobili? We say win it with our defense and at the end, what better way to make a statement than to get two stops on the last two positions of the game. It was just big on Josh Howard’s part, and Devin Harris breaking the defense down once again tonight was big. We’ve just got to continue to grow and get better as a team, stay humble and prepare ourselves. You and Devin Harris combined for 43 points in the backcourt? It was big. We were getting out in transition once again and we did run enough to get early offense and to get things rolling early. Talk about Dirk’s play tonight? Well, Dirk and Devin really attacked the basket tonight. Devin was 10-for-11 from the line, that was big and Dirk made most of his. That’s something we’ve been working on so we’ve got to continue to get better and attack and be aggressive. Against San Antonio you can’t play passive basketball, when you do it allows them to get back into the game.
Great game, both ways. I thought we had a tough first half, tough first quarter-and-a-half. We started to play a little better, although we have to play better basketball to beat these guys. I thought that for the second half tonight, we may have figured a few things out, played better defense and hung in long enough to give ourselves a chance. We had a couple mistakes down the stretch and Dallas took advantage of it. On the in-bound play at the end of the 4th: Manu [Ginobli] and Robert [Horry] were going to do a dribble hand off and Manu was going to take it to the whole or pass it to an open guy, but let him be in charge of it. And I think it was Devin, although I am not sure, I will have to look at the film, but I think Devin Harris got in-between them and made a great play and knocked it out of Manu’s hand. On his lineup change: Some good, some bad just like any other game – give and take. We’ll have to switch it around a little bit depending on what’s going on on the court. On Manu Ginobli’s play: Manu did a good job. The second half, he seemed to get a second wind. His legs looked pretty good, he seemed to have a little better elevation than he’s had for a while, a bit more lift. We went to him because he did a good job.
On fouling out at the end of the game: It was incredibly frustrating because of the type of fouls that were being called down the stretch there. I didn’t think they were fouls and then to sit with that with such a short clock. I thought the guys did great. We got some great shots, and Manu was big in making those shots of course. And then we had that turnover. It was just a very frustrating time. On the sixth foul call: He didn’t fall into me. He didn’t touch me – I didn’t touch him. He tried to draw contact, I moved out of his way. If he stepped on my foot, he stepped on my foot. There was zero contact. On Manu Ginobli: Manu, down the stretch, I thought he did really well. He got into a rhythm and started attacking the basket and I thought he did a great job getting us back into the game at one point there. It was huge for him to break down that defense and get into the seams there when they double team or even if they don’t. 
 | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
