NBA FINALS: PISTONS v SPURS

June 15, 2005

Tim Duncan

TIM DUNCAN: Execute. It's all about execution. We helped them a lot last night, watching the film a little bit, but they were great with their energy and with their pressure. But we didn't make the moves or we didn't execute the plays to counter that, so it's all about execution.

TIM DUNCAN: I don't want to have back-to-back bad games. These guys are a very good defensive teams and I hope to come out and would like to be more effective. I don't want to have a game like I did last night.

TIM DUNCAN: We're not worried about shutting him down. He's an energy guy. He played great last night. We're going to do our best job to keep him off the boards, and see what happens.

TIM DUNCAN: He's not as explosive but at the same time he's been playing really well. It looks like he's really getting his rhythm, really getting into a flow there and he looks a lot like the McDyess of old. He's making strong moves, he's using his fadeaway jumper. Defensively, he's really strong and rebounding the ball real well and he's getting to the post.

TIM DUNCAN: Not at all. Not at all. He's a lot like me, he doesn't want to have those two bad games in a row. He's going to refocus and he's going to do what he has to do to either get away from the attention or to refocus once the game comes about and do a lot better job with it. We all watched film today. We all saw what we did, and a lot of us will watch the game again. So we'll see what's going on, and as I said, those guys did a lot, but we helped them with our lack of execution and making that extra pass that we haven't done the first two games.

TIM DUNCAN: Yeah, these guys, they came in here and they held court for this first game. As you say, it is just a real difference-maker, it's a whole new series being 2-2, as opposed to being 3-1. But we're approaching this game, as you said, as important as any other game. We want to really jump on these guys. We just want to take care of the things they weren't taking care of in this last game and we want to execute better and we want to match their aggressiveness and match their energy and play from there.

TIM DUNCAN: No.

TIM DUNCAN: Personally?

TIM DUNCAN: Just being stronger with the ball. I thought I was a little lackadaisical with the ball, I got it knocked away a couple of times, telegraphed a lot of my moves, and just made bad moves. So it's about being a little more assertive on the offensive end, being a little more crisp on the offensive end, but at the same time, they also got a bunch of offensive rebounds and killed us in that respect. So I have to be a part of that and make sure that I get bodies on people and cut that down as much as possible.

TIM DUNCAN: Yeah, it was a lot of just lack of execution, I want to tell those guys, I thought they played an excellent game, but fourth quarter, nine minutes left, it's a four-point ballgame despite all the turnovers and all that we gave up on the offensive glass. If we execute and we play a solid game from there on, it's anybody's ballgame, but we let it get away from us.