NBA FINALS: KNICKS VS. SPURS

June 4, 2026

Mitch Johnson

San Antonio Spurs

Practice Day

Q. The fact that you have taken tough roads during these playoffs and survived them, is that any consolation right now?

MITCH JOHNSON: I guess it has to be. We've been consistent in that regard. I think one thing we have learned in our three series is that series are long. Games are long. Things shift quickly, whether that's health, who's playing well or hot, quote/unquote, at the time.

Teams at this stage typically have shown the ability to evolve on the fly and improve within a series. That's how you see these series go back and forth, and these teams make great adjustments and take advantage of those.

Yeah, in this moment right now, we're coming off a loss, and it's on us to get into that balancing act of change, tweak over here, be better and sharper over there.

Q. You guys like to run a lot of your offense from that horns configuration. Gives your ball handlers a lot of decisions to make. They were packing the paint, taking away some lobs and easy looks from Wemby. What do you have to do to get Wemby those easy shots and easy opportunities?

MITCH JOHNSON: I think there's a combination of things. We played a couple teams similar that are very committed to guarding the paint with bodies. So whether it's in the halfcourt set configuration you're speaking of, or just in general, I think we have to make sure we don't fight the game. If a team is going to be very adamant and committed to taking away something, typically that means it's opening something else up elsewhere.

That doesn't mean that's going to be a direct result in that. We have to make sure we pass the ball to open guys, make sure we continue to put pressure on the rim. That's not always for ourselves, that could be with a roll, a cut, a drive. I think last night we got a little away from that.

Q. Two minutes later when you tie the game, one-point lead, was there any thought of putting Dylan back out there?

MITCH JOHNSON: There was definitely consideration, Dylan had a heck of a game, was playing very well. That comes when you have a lot of good players, those decisions.

Dylan did not finish the game by nothing he did or did not do. It was a decision I made. I understand that there would be logic in having Dylan in that group. I thought that group that was out there did some things during that stretch, and that's what I rolled with.

Q. In terms of the pace that created those threes that you took last night, how was it going back and seeing on the film, the quality of looks?

MITCH JOHNSON: Thought some of the threes felt rushed. Some of the threes may have still been good shots and still felt rushed. I think there was some of the execution of what got into or went into the shot, then some were just the shots themselves.

Again, that's just something we'll have to continue to give feedback to the guys on, hopefully improve as the series goes on.

We did get a lot of looks from threes last night. Again, maybe a few of those needed to be more placed towards the rim or paint. That might not have been the shot, that might have been stuff that happened before that that produced the shots that we got.

There's a lot of things offensively, the ripple effect can be rather grand when you pull back the layers and get into the weeds. We have to continue to respect our style of play and brand of basketball.

Q. Wemby made it clear he’s not worried at all going forward. Where do you get that same confidence from? What are the main adjustments you want to make before Game 2?

MITCH JOHNSON: I think we gave ourselves a lot of aspects of the game we need to improve. It didn't take too much film or too deep to dig to find the second-chance points. It's clearly one of them – 16 assists is not a reflection of this program ever since I've been here, and decades before I was.

We can be much sharper on just a lot of game plan execution stuff. Then I think you add that I think Victor will play better? Sure. I think a couple guys will make more shots than they did. Agree. If you do that stuff, that's just going to happen on its own over time, water finding its level percentage, evening out.

There are things we can control that are approach/game plan execution driven, that we can improve upon before you even get to what did this guy shoot from the field, et cetera, et cetera.

Q. The youth of this group has been stressed during the season. So many mistakes happen in the final decisions of the game. How do you plan to adjust the decision-making for Game 2?

MITCH JOHNSON: Yeah, we talked about it, discussed it. Old teams make bad decisions, too, at the end of games. It's looking at a picture, understand if you see that moving forward, whatever that pattern is, whatever led to that situation, if you can recognize it and make a better decision next time or understand maybe where there's a better opportunity to look for an advantage, we'll try to help them with that. We'll show them on film, walk it on the court, rep it out, and trust our guys will continue to make good decisions as they learn what they're looking for.

Q. What are your thoughts on how Karl-Anthony Towns guarded Victor Wembanyama?

MITCH JOHNSON: I thought our offense in general did not put a lot of people in the right situations and spots last night. New York had a lot to do with that. They did a lot.

Towns, to your question, specifically did a good job being physical and being in the right spots.

I think the way we played offensively in terms of a team and our brand, we didn't play with the pass enough, we didn't put enough pressure, force the rim in the paint. It led a lot of making or missing shots, us trying to play with talent offensively instead of playing together and finding opportunities to take advantage of forcing defenses to put themselves and making decisions of giving up this or giving up that. New York gets a lot of credit for that.

I think we have a lot of room for improvement on that moving forward.