NBA FINALS: KNICKS VS. SPURS

June 12, 2026

Devin Vassell

San Antonio Spurs

Practice Day

Q. What is sort of the mentality now? Your back's against the wall, 3-1, you've got to do this three times. How do you guys tackle that challenge?

DEVIN VASSELL: One game at a time. Just one game at a time. It's a lot of stuff that we watched in film that we feel like we can control and we can be better at. Nothing is guaranteed. Nothing is promised. But we know we've at least got one game.

So we need to go 1-0, and whatever we need to do for that to happen, we've got to do that.

Q. Has (Harrison Barnes) talked to you about his experience in the 2016 Finals? It's the only time a team has blown a 3-1 lead. He was on the wrong side of it obviously.

DEVIN VASSELL: No, he hasn't, and thank you for saying that because that's something we need to talk to HB about. We're all motivated. We're all ready to go.

Obviously after the game, it's tough. The locker room is quiet. We're trying to figure out what happened, what went wrong. Fast forward 48 hours later, same goal, same mission. We feel like we've played them really good for the past four games. We just really haven't been able to close out games.

Obviously a credit to them. But we feel like we have been able to control a lot of this series, and we've just got to figure out how to finish these games.

Q. Both teams had huge runs in the last game. I'm curious what makes getting back to executing the game plan so hard when your head is under water?

DEVIN VASSELL: Really good question. I think from the beginning of the season we've hung our hat on the defensive end. When we're not getting stops, when we're not communicating, when we're not doing the things that got us into position that got us a lead, everything else trickles down.

So our offense is the same. We're not getting out in transition. We're not running the same sets that we're normally doing. I just think that at the end of the day, we've always said that we're a defensive team, and if we can stay doing that, even during a run, if we can cut down a run from it being a 20-4 run to a 10-4 run and getting stops, then we'll be all right.

Q. Dev, how long does it take to flush a game like Game 4? This might be kind of dumb, but to a certain extent, do you not want to totally flush it because you want to -- I mean, you know where I'm coming from. You don't want to forget what that was like?

DEVIN VASSELL: Yeah, transparency, yesterday was probably the most I thought about it. Obviously with the game being that night, I thought about it that night, thought about it yesterday. Woke up this morning ready to go, ready to execute the game plan for the next day.

I think that's everybody's mindset -- cool, we're not going to sit here and keep thinking about what we could have done, what should have happened with this, this or that. That's not changing the result of anything. At the end of the day, we've got to be ready to execute the game plan, trust what the coaches have got for us, and be ready to go.

Q. While obviously there's a task at hand, the potential making of history or matching history, is that something that enters your mind collectively in terms of rallying from a 3-1 deficit to win a title?

DEVIN VASSELL: I think of course, but you can't think about that honestly at all, because you've got to start off going 1-0. You can't look too far into the future because, as I said, literally there's nothing promised for us right now. We've got our backs against the wall.

Let's just focus on trying to go 1-0, which starts tomorrow, and then from there we'll just try to walk it down.