Fuente : San Antonio Spurs
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NBA Finals Game 7: Spurs Quotes

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GREGG POPOVICH

COACH GREGG POPOVICH: First, I'd like to congratulate the Pistons organization, the coaches and their players for a fantastic year. They are one heck of a basketball team as we all know, and what they did last year and this year back to back is pretty incredible and pretty hard to do and very few are in that position.
I also need to thank Coach Brown, because without him, I wouldn't even be sitting here. And I'd also like to congratulate our organization from top to bottom, you know, from owners, players, coaches, staff, everybody who worked so hard. It was an unbelievable year. I still don't believe what happened tonight. And they deserve a lot of credit, too.
So, that's that.

Q. Congratulations. How easy does having a guy like Tim Duncan make your job?
COACH GREGG POPOVICH: Well, you know, when you call plays or do things on the court, it always works better when he's out there. I do the same things with someone else on the court, it doesn't work.
So obviously Tim is a factor. He's the reason things go. If he scores, that's great. If he doesn't score, he's spacing the floor, getting the ball to other people who do score, and he's always rebounding and playing D. So his complete game is so sound, so fundamental, so unnoticed at times, because if he doesn't score, people think, well, he didn't do anything. But he was incredible and he was the force that got it done for us.

Q. It seemed like in the second half when you fell behind, your defense found another level and that's what you back in the game. Can you talk about what you guys were doing out there, and how important the switch to the zone for a few possessions was to that?
COACH GREGG POPOVICH: We thought after going back and looking at games 1 and 2, the difference they scored you have to help me, I think 86 and 79, whatever. We made stops in that game. We followed the stops with a rebound and reran. We scored points. When we didn't make stops in Detroit, they ran on us, and we didn't rebound well.
We thought no matter what we did X's and O's wise, our halfcourt did was important and it was important to make stops and get the rebound. That quickens the pace for us, so that was important.
We thought we'd go ahead and take a chance tonight, they are so tough to guard, especially after time outs, because Coach does a great job of putting you in awkward positions. We did some zone, and it happened to work tonight.

Q. Coach, I understand that a few moments ago you met with Coach Brown, and I was wondering if you could either share what was said or how difficult that was for you and/or he?
COACH GREGG POPOVICH: Well, he's a whole lot more mature and wise than I am, because he was fantastic. He gave made me feel real comfortable and he was congratulatory and is just classy beyond belief.
Yeah, it felt weird. I felt for him and his group, because they are just as good as we are. They work just as hard as we do, and we made shots tonight and they had a tougher time than the other night making shots. It was very heartfelt and he made it easy for me.

Q. He was very classy to you, but yet how much could you tell that this hurt him and what did you say to him?
COACH GREGG POPOVICH: Well, you know, he's a competitor. He didn't want to lose. He's hurting a lot. It will dissipate like it does for all of us, but he handled it such that you would not even know it.
Any other comments are, you know, just our own.

Q. If he does have to give up the coaching, how tough do you think that's going to be for him knowing how much he loves the game?
COACH GREGG POPOVICH: Well, let's wait and see what happens.

Q. This third trip The Finals, for you personally, how different was it? It seemed like you were the funniest guy in the press conference the whole last three weeks.
COACH GREGG POPOVICH: Well, thank you. (Laughter). It's a pretty volatile league, and you never know what you're going to get the axe. So I've been working on my future. Somebody might have thought I called time outs wrong and a month from now I could be back in Pomona Pitzer. I used to coach there.

Q. Could I ask you, I got here a bit late, everyone focuses on Tim throughout the year; when you lose, it's his fault, and when you win. Can you talk about what he showed tonight, not necessarily to you, because I think you know what he is, can you talk about that?
COACH GREGG POPOVICH: I'm kind of used to that. It was the same way when David was here. If he wins, well, it's expected and if he loses, well, you know, that's bad.
The same way with Timmy, and it's like that with all great players, I guess. He was special throughout the entire playoffs. When he did have a bad game, he always figured out some time in the series to come back and lead us to where we needed to be, and everybody follows him. He sets the tone, and all of us, our staff, myself, he's unbelievably incisive, mature, and always kind of steady. Some of us are a little bit more like that (indicating up and down), but he's more that way (indicating steady).

Q. What about tonight?
COACH GREGG POPOVICH: He was special tonight, because you could tell when he caught the ball, how much more physical he was, getting in position, bumping and grinding and getting shots and making sure he got toward the rim, so that when people came at him he was in good position to open up a teammate for a wide open shot and he did that. He played D, he hit the boards and he did everything.

Q. I'm going to try this for the third time to ask you this question.
COACH GREGG POPOVICH: Okay.

Q. Now that you have three titles in seven years
COACH GREGG POPOVICH: So bored of this. So boring.

Q. Let me ask you this.
COACH GREGG POPOVICH: Nobody cares.

Q. About you? You always say
COACH GREGG POPOVICH: Let's talk about Iraq or something that matters. But it doesn't matter. But go ahead, it's your deal. I'm supposed it sit here and answer. I apologize.

Q. That's okay. It's part of the game.
COACH GREGG POPOVICH: Thank you.

Q. You always say that it's your job, and you have success if you don't mess it up. Can you assess what you did in the sidelines in this series, is it simply not messing it up, or is it actually mixing it up perhaps with defenses?
COACH GREGG POPOVICH: I probably did some good things and I probably made some mistakes. I mean, don't you think that's fair? That's probably what happened. There were you know, you go back after a game, there's always something the next day, why did I do that, why did I do this. And probably we did something good and we want to continue to did it.
It's always a little bit of both, but when you talk about those championships or credit and that kind of thing, that involves a lot of people. My staff is great. They have ideas that sometimes I don't even think of them.
During the game tonight, I'm saying, we're going to, you know, Bruce will be (shaking head). So we change it. So really it's a participatory sort of thing, honestly, that we do. Everything can have an opinion. Obviously I have to make the final decision and we go with it, but I'm blessed with guys that have the character and judgment to know that when we decide something, that's what we are all going to do.

Q. What wine are you going to celebrate this with?
COACH GREGG POPOVICH: It's not going to be the champagne in the locker room. My eyes are burning, so it's pretty cheap stuff, so we have to find something different. (Laughter).
We're playing these guys a lot of money, you would think the organization could buy some decent champagne. What's up with that? (Laughter).

Q. Can you talk about the success your defense had toward the end of the game and the stops you made on Chauncey Billups towards the end?
COACH GREGG POPOVICH: Well, they did a good job, I don't know how else to say it. Tony Parker, Bruce Bowen and Manu on the perimeter, all three of them I thought were very special down the stretch the last five or six minutes in a defensive way. Manu is going to be a do a little bit more for us offensively at this point than Bruce and Tony. But I'll tell you, Tony was real key defensively on the perimeter, and Manu and Bruce followed suit. Bruce is always there doing it, but you add Tony and he does what he did at that point, you know, we were really good on the perimeter on D and I thought that got us stops, got us going back the other way. Fast.
Thank you all, women, ladies, you're all great.

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TIM DUNCAN

Q. Congratulations on the big win. At what point in the third quarter did you just feel it for you, this was your night?
TIM DUNCAN: There was a point there, I got on a roll there for a little while, my shot felt good and things started going down for me and I just tried to be aggressive in that point in time.
It wasn't the greatest of games but there was a stretch there where I felt really good and I just wanted to be assertive at that point. A lot of credit to Detroit, they had one heck of an effort. They are an incredible defensive team. They made us work for everything that we got. It's just hats off to them.

Q. Were you aware that you had been shutout for almost 14 minutes of the second and third quarters when you finally got that basket and the three point play and things began to roll at that point?
TIM DUNCAN: No. Despite what you think, we don't get those stats at the time. (Laughter).

Q. I don't know if you felt like it's not going for me.
TIM DUNCAN: I felt like the game was going bad for me, yeah, I did feel that. But it was about just kind of pushing through it and just the perseverance. Those guys, my teammates just continue to throw the ball in and to feed me. They were more confident in me than I was, and that is so appreciated. They will never even understand, and they just kept coming to me and kept giving me the opportunities and I got one to fall in and two to fall in and things started happening. Then I was able to draw some double teams and got some guys some open shots. The whole game was about perseverance, sticking to it, keeping it going, things not going well, don't really care and keep on going.

Q. Your defense seemed substantially better tonight, especially in the second half, the Spurs defense, that is, not you personally
TIM DUNCAN: I did all right, too.

Q. What do you attribute that to? Was there anything you were doing differently or just a better effort?
TIM DUNCAN: I hate to be repetitive, but perseverance. We just stuck with it. We just kept on pushing. We just kept on fighting. We didn't do anything special that we had not done the first six games. We stuck to it. We believed in what we were doing and we believed that if we did it the right way we could get it done, and a lot of credit to our guards who continually ran off screens and got hit left and right and continued to fight over screens and get back in front of people. I thought we contested shots so much better than we did in the last three and four games. We just perseverance. I'll end there. Thank you.

Q. Can you describe the role Gregg Popovich had, and specifically tonight?
TIM DUNCAN: He's to use one of his quotes, he's the head of the snake, he's the one that makes us go. He prepares us so well for games. He's great at getting on you and praising you when it's time and calling you a piece of whatever at times. He balances it so well.
I just I don't know what to say about him. He really is ask, and not taking anything away from Larry Brown, he really is the best in the league I believe.

Q. And tonight did he do anything differently?
TIM DUNCAN: No. Tonight, all he talked about the last two days was appreciating the time, appreciating it and living in the moment; understanding that this is a first Game 7 in however many years, and to really go out, and that if we did things the right way, the way that we've planned them, the way that we've wanted to do the entire series, things would go the right way. He put that in our heads so much, we just stuck with it.
We didn't have the greatest game. We scored 81 points, which is pretty decent for us, it's all right for us, but we didn't have the greatest game where we ran away from anybody, but we just stuck with it.

Q. Could you please tell me what it's like to have had Manu as a teammate the last three years and watching him grow so much?
TIM DUNCAN: Manu is unbelievable. You can say this about so many people, and whether it be true or not, I think it's absolutely true for him. I don't think we've even scratched the surface with him. He's got so much to him. He just plays with reckless abandon, he doesn't care the time or the situation, he doesn't care if it's a preseason game or it's a Finals game. He plays the same way.
He's going to continue to grow and we're going to continue to grow around him. We're going to continue to understand what he wants to do and when he wants to do it. He was so big for us, every game, in the fourth quarter, he was the guy that took things or really made things happen, and to play besides someone like that who can do that in that situation, it takes so much pressure off of myself, off of Tony. It helps our team so much, and you can see it, and he doesn't care. He's going to make the play. He's going to make it happen, and he got a lot well, he gave himself a lot of crap for the finish of Game 6 or whatever, he thought he took some bad shots. He thought he would make some plays down the stretch and make some shots. He got on himself about it more than anybody else got on him and that's what he's going to do. We understand it now and we love having him and we love we love what he does down the stretch.

Q. Along the same line, you're not GM, I don't think you are, but you guys
TIM DUNCAN: Not officially, at least. (Laughter).

Q. Everybody comes back, long range things set up; is that a good feeling and you expect that this is a team that can kind of, with some little pieces staying together?
TIM DUNCAN: It's a great feeling. It's a great feeling. In years past, we've lost six, seven, eight, nine guys in a year, and rebuilt. I think we've really got a core here that we're in love with; that obviously is a pretty decent core, and we're going to have it together for a couple of years. Pop will probably come in here and say that we didn't play very well tonight, and he'll be tough on us, but we can play we can play a lot better, and that's something horrible to say up here right now as we're sitting up here NBA champs, but we have years to do that, and I think that's the greatest feeling in the world. We have a team that will be able to try to in years to come, try to continue to get back to this point.

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TONY PARKER

Q. Tony, congratulations, first of all.
TONY PARKER: Thanks.

Q. The emotions, can you talk about what this means to you?
TONY PARKER: Unbelievable. I'm very lucky, 23 and winning two championships, and getting all that experience, all of those moments that I'm never going to forget, my life is just unbelievable.

Q. And what did this team could I just follow up and say, what did this team show for you tonight?
TONY PARKER: A lot of character and they really, really want to win. We work hard all season long to get that home court advantage and we did our jobs tonight. It was great and unbelievable, starting with Timmy. Tim was huge, came out big in the third quarter when we were struggling and I'm just very happy to be on that team. I'm enjoying myself here. I've had a lot of fun all year long. Pop was tough on me, but, you know, when you get the results, I'm just very happy.

Q. What was the emotion in the third quarter there when you guys were down and all of a sudden something just clicked and you guys went off on a run?
TONY PARKER: Just Timmy. I think when we saw Timmy playing like that, it gave us extra energy. And you follow your leader. Timmy is the leader of our team, and he just carried us tonight and that's why he deserved the MVP because he carried us for the whole season.

Q. On top of that, what was it in the fourth quarter that allowed you to keep the momentum, as opposed to Game 6 where the wheels came off?
TONY PARKER: The key is defense. We played great defense tonight. We talked a lot yesterday about keep making stops and make sure we keep a low scoring game and we have a great chance to win that game. We played great defense. We had great rebounds; Robert with a great steal and Bruce with a block. It was just great plays by everybody.

Q. Why are you wearing the French flag, first of all, and second of all, don't you think that Ginobili could have been a good co MVP throughout this series with Duncan and how ironic is it that last game's weakness, the three point shots became the strength in the final?
TONY PARKER: That's a long question.

Q. Waiting a long time to ask one.
TONY PARKER: The first one, I'm happy to be representing France for all of the fans following me all year long, and I'm just happy for them and happy for all of my friends and my family.
Then second question, Manu played great. He's just a great player for our team. And we have a lot of great players on this team; you know, Nazr, Robert Horry, we have a lot of great players. But I think Timmy is the leader on our team and he is just the best player on our team and Manu is right there. He played a great series. Timmy, I think that's where it starts with him.
Three point stats shots, we did a few mistakes in game 6, 28, which was too much, and I thought we did a good job tonight of being in attack mode and being aggressive and being inside for Timmy. He didn't get a lot of touches the second half of Game 6 and we did a good job tonight.

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MANU GINOBILI

Q. Late in the fourth quarter, you hit the big three pass from Tim out of a collapsing type situation, how did he see you or describe that play.
MANU GINOBILI: Well, he started to play really well, dominating, making a lot of field goals, so started to get worried about him and before he passed it to me, he passed it to Bruce and Bruce made another big three. Then it was my turn and I think it was in that moment that we started changing the game and feeling more confident.

Q. The little things that Tim did sometimes get overlooked, but what did it mean for you guys seeing him do the little things?
MANU GINOBILI: Today he was huge, especially in the second half, little things like diving for that ball, dominating, as I said, and not getting blind about finishing. Whenever he saw somebody crowding him, double teaming or helping, he just kicked the ball and made it available to an open shooter. That's what makes him one of best players in the world.

Q. Tim is such a quiet leader, do you think at any point that he felt that he had to go out and kind of silence his critics and prove again that he has the heart of a champion and he can lead his team?
MANU GINOBILI: I don't know if it was about the critics, I doubt that he knew that somebody was criticizing him, because he's not that kind of guy he's going to be worried about what people say.
But he always feels so responsible, he's so hard on himself every time he doesn't play that good, that I knew that sooner or later he was going to show up, especially down the stretch. So that shows the character and the type of player he is, so I'm very, very proud to be his teammate.

Q. You guys went from having slow feet in the first half to fast hands in the second, what got into you guys at the defensive end and was it something Coach Pop said at halftime or the energy of Game 7?
MANU GINOBILI: Yes, I think we stopped being ourselves in a moment in the third quarter. We got too frantic, too in a hurry, and we were not even playing them five on five defensively, and that was a big key for us. If we let them run and score in transition, we were done.
So when we start playing better D, then offensively, we move the ball and we run a lot, we started doing it much better.

Q. You're one of just less than a handful of people who have won an Olympic gold medal and now an NBA Championship in the same season, can you just sum up this amazing year you had?
MANU GINOBILI: Well, you summed it up. It's just unbelievable. It's not easy to win any of them, and I was able to be part of those two teams in one year, so being a part of the Argentinean team was an unbelievable feeling.
Today I'm too tired, it happened half an hour ago, but I bet in a month I'm going to feel the same way about this championship. So it's been an unbelievable year, but, you know, this continues and we're going to try to repeat it.

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BRUCE BOWEN

BRUCE BOWEN: Kid in a candy store. You know, party, party, candy, I'm hyper, I'm energetic, this is a beautiful moment.

Q. When you see Tim Duncan do things like diving for a loose ball or forcing a shot clock violation and then making great passes, besides him just scoring, what does that do for you guys?
BRUCE BOWEN: It does everything for us. I've always said that he's the focus of our offense. He's the foundation here. We understand that, and it was just so unfortunate that a lot of the things he's capable of doing, everybody is entitled to their own opinion, but we understood what we had in him.
Us being at home, we were more disappointed in not playing our style of basketball. It was little things that we were not doing correct, and against a team like Detroit, you have to do the little things correctly so that you can get a chance to win a game.

Q. So you see him starting to do these little things, does
BRUCE BOWEN: I think it's infectious, especially as it got the nuts and bolts of the game, you know, it was tight and we were starting to pull away a little bit and you see him get on the floor for a loose ball, that energizes other guys. All it takes is one, it's like a domino effect, somebody starts and another finishes it off.

Q. Congratulations.
BRUCE BOWEN: Thank you.

Q. Second time in three years.
BRUCE BOWEN: Thank you, thank you.

Q. Back to Tim Duncan, do you think he takes any kind of it satisfies him that he answered his critics and came up big in the biggest stage?
BRUCE BOWEN: Well, I don't think his critics affected him at all. He's a guy that understands that everybody has an opinion and everybody wants to dissect your game when things are not going well for you as a team and he doesn't get caught up in that, his whole thing is, hey, I understand what I have to do, the coaches will let me know what I'm not doing right so that I can do a better job of whatever it is, and he goes out and attacks it after that.

Q. Can you talk about that late block on the 3 pointer on Chauncey Billups and what you were doing?
BRUCE BOWEN: My main focus was, hey, I don't want Chauncey to get hot right now. Chauncey, he's able to take over the game at any given moment, and the last game, he had five threes and that was that was four too many, if any.
So I was just trying to make sure I stayed up with him and, you know, with my length, sometimes it creates problems for guys and I'm long and once he went up in the air and I saw he was committed, it was a chance for me to react and I was just so happy I got the ball.

Q. You guys limited them a lot in the fourth quarter, what did you do to disrupt their game in the fourth quarter in particular?
BRUCE BOWEN: I think it was paying attention to detail. It's not just about me guarding Rip or me guarding Chauncey, it's about our team doing a better job and maybe shifting over a little bit so that we can make it a little more difficult.
So me knowing how it is to chase Rip, once I got to Chauncey, I kind of I tried to shade in different areas, not whereas he could just blow by me or pull up for a jumpshot but more or less trying to do the things that would help us if there's a guy, a step slow, you know, my shift will help my teammate out.

Q. Congratulations to a former player from the French league. Talk about the key point in the game seemed to be when you guys went down nine in the third quarter, what were the things you guys talked about and did to get back in the game because it looked like it went to a zone for one of the rare times at that point?
BRUCE BOWEN: It was for a hot second, during that time I was more or less trying to it was just a matter of us taking ourselves out on defense because we're trying to make something happen instead of, you know, staying the course and allowing things to take place, we tried to force it to happen a little bit and we came close to some good skills by Manu, but we didn't get them. It got a little frantic there for a hot second, but guys, we've been together for a long time and we understand that sometimes we make those kind of plays and they are good and sometimes we make those kind of plays and nothing happens with that.
It was more or less about us staying focused during that time to continue on with what we do and not take ourselves out of it without making them take us out.

Q. Did you play some zone though at that time?
BRUCE BOWEN: Yeah, we went to zone for a hot second, and, you know, it was good for us. It gave us a chance to, you know, give them a different look because they were so used to seeing us in man to man, we went to zone, I think it threw them off a little bit, but not too much.

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ROBERT HORRY

Q. Robert, has it hit you what you've been able to accomplish in your career now, not only the Championship tonight but six rings, three different teams, and the three different teams, only one other player has ever done that, John Salley, has that hit you, the career you've been able to put together?
ROBERT HORRY: It hasn't. When you win a championship, period, it never hits you until you get home the next day. You're so overwhelmed right now that you don't know, it's just a whirlwind and you wake up tomorrow, turn the TV on and you see the Spurs win the Championship, that's when it really hits you.

Q. The emotions right now, you have been through it before, obviously, it's not a new thing for you, but can you just describe what going through your heart, what this one means to you, coming back after a disappointing Game 6?
ROBERT HORRY: I just have to sit down and re evaluate. It's special because of the Championship, you're always going to love the Championship no matter what. I've just got to sit back and read the paper, see what y'all are talking about and assess where I put this one.

Q. Is this the game ball and have you got it because you're like the older guy?
ROBERT HORRY: No, I got it because everybody was jumping up and down and I ran out and got it. (Laughter). My last Championship, I gave the ball to Mitch because, you know, Mitch Richmond was a special player to me, I always thought he was wonderful and it was his first championship. I thought about giving it to T Man (phonetic) because he's been in the league for so long, but I said no, I want this one for myself. It's my sixth championship, I wanted to keep it for myself.

Q. You mentioned a day or two ago that right now you would rank Tim Duncan as the third best big name you've played with, would you care to change that now?
ROBERT HORRY: No. (Laughter) This is why this is why, I won two with Kareem, three with Shaq. Now if he wins it for me next year, he'll be top.

Q. Can you talk about his play down the stretch and how huge it was for you guys?
ROBERT HORRY: Man, from jump street, Tim came out, and, oh, he's ready tonight, let's go, we're going to ride him, he went through a spell where he wasn't scoring and then all of a sudden he hit his shots and he got the job done down the stretch where he scored five in a row. He did his thing, came out tonight and shed a lot of doubts.

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BRENT BARRY

Q: Can you talk about Tim Duncan’s and Manu Ginobili’s play?
Barry: Absolutely, you know those guys coming in, were very focused, but they came up when we needed them to. In the fourth quarter, Tim (Duncan) was demonstrative and focused and all the things that people said he wasn’t and isn’t in this series, and that’s why he’s the MVP once again.

Q: Did you guys make a decision to come out and play more aggressive?
Barry: Yeah. Just to have some fun and try and relax. Robert (Horry) talked to me about that he said to go out and let it rip. And so I felt more comfortable in the last two games than I had in a long time. I just wanted to provide some energy and keep our team close and let the big boys take of it down the stretch.

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DEVIN BROWN

Q: Can you talk about how tight the series was, especially the last three games, there were hardly any separation between those guys?
Brown: It was more about taking Detroit out of their comfort zone when they were playing in San Antonio. In Game 6 you could see the way their swagger was that they were real comfortable. And we just got them off of their rhythm a little bit, executing down the stretch, we didn’t do that in Game 6, but we did that in Game 7 and we came out with a victory.

Q: Are you slowly realizing what you and the team have done right now or is it going to take a while to sink in?
Brown: I’m happy we won. It hasn’t sunk in yet maybe it will sink in once I get downtown. But we just set a goal in the beginning of the year and then we achieved it so it feels great.
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