NBA WESTERN CONFERENCE FINALS: SPURS v SUNS

May 24, 2005

Mike D'Antoni

COACH D'ANTONI: Good. At this stage he shot, he looked good. His spirits were up. I think we will have three or four days to evaluate and assess where he is and get some contact, then we'll make a decision later on.

COACH D'ANTONI: It's the same. At this point I would think every game is unbelievably important. Now, because we lost the first one obviously it's a little bit more of a dire situation or whatever. But our guys, they need to win this one, the next one and the one after, but we have a good mindset. We're loose and know how important it is. But I think we're ready to give everything we got.

COACH D'ANTONI: No, we've never been that type of team, we're not. We're a running team. The ball should flow where it goes and whoever is open is going to get it. I think the -- we never made an adjustment when Amare (Stoudemire) gets 9 points because Memphis kind of threw the kitchen sink at him, we look at what the Phoenix Suns did, scored 114. We're going to continue on that. I think Shawn (Marion) will be fine. I think they will make adjustments also. I think the ball will find Shawn. We'll be more aggressive. But the biggest thing that can help Quentin (Richardson) help Shawn and everybody if we can get some deflections, some runouts, get some open court kind of transition. That's where everybody kind of lives and feeds. We get into a half-court game, Amare and Steve are going to be prominent in our schemes. But we didn't get out and run enough because we didn't stop them enough. I think it just comes from our defense.

COACH D'ANTONI: Yeah, those are tough spots. You don't want to not be aggressive when you are a young kid and you don't want to be overaggressive. It's not my style to yell and scream and we point things out and show him on the film and just bring him along.

COACH D'ANTONI: I would describe it really good. He has got more rings than anybody in the building, I think. He causes problems, and he gives them that small lineup because he can spreads the floor and he opens it up for Tim Duncan and makes it tough to double Duncan. When he's in the game it causes us a lot of problems.

COACH D'ANTONI: Yeah, well, he said it. He plays great in this style. They have opened it up a little bit. That's what makes sense, Tony (Parker) is so tough. They have to score a lot of points to beat us. They know that. A lot of teams don't have that possibility. They have the capability to do that. Tony Parker is really important how he pushes the ball. He had 9 layups on us last game. Those are areas that we're going to try to close him off as much as we can. Keep him in a corral, make them make shots over us. They are also capable of that. But at least that's the game plan in trying to keep them shooting from the outside. Easy to say, Tony Parker -- Nash is going to have to guard him. We don't without Joe Johnson, we don't have anybody other than Leandro (Barbosa). If Leandro would get into the game and play well, then we can spell Steve (Nash), but it comes to Steve right now.

COACH D'ANTONI: You don't, right. You don't also don't want to use it as excuse. We don't need to do that. I thought the first 8 minutes of the game we were sluggish and tired and we didn't run and we kind of set the tone early. We were down 30-20 in the first quarter. Last three-quarters we scored 94 points. I thought our tempo and energy was fine. We just started off slow. Maybe that cost us at the end, maybe we had to expend too much energy to get over the hump to get back in the lead. Who knows, but again I think it's natural that we were's emotionally up and we just struggled a little bit early, but you got to give it to our guys, they just kept plugging and found a way to get ahead and just didn't find a way to finish the game.

COACH D'ANTONI: (Laughs.)

COACH D'ANTONI: Definitely a setup. If they knock me out I will be able to say something. But if I have to play them, I better not say anything.