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NBA WESTERN CONFERENCE FINALS: SUNS v MAVERICKSMay 30, 2006Avery JohnsonPHOENIX, ARIZONA: Game Four Q. D'Antoni said yesterday that it was a must situation for his team, and obviously you have a chance to close out here. How do you deal with the Phoenix's desperation, there's certainly desperation mode today? COACH AVERY JOHNSON: I think all year for us, regular season and the playoffs, we're pretty much a team that really just look internal. We're only really concerned about, you know, our desperation, and our level of play defensively and offensively. You know, we can't really control the emotions of another basketball team. I think that adds too much stress to our situation and maybe causes us to lose some focus. So we've always internalized. I think we've gone into pretty much every game this year, maybe except for one, and had that really concerned look on our face and that desperate look on our face. And we look at every game as a single game. So I think we're more looking at us and concerned about kind of what we do and what we need to do to be successful. Q. Avery, do you sense a killer instinct with this team? Have you sensed that in the playoffs? COACH AVERY JOHNSON: Well, you call it what you want. I just think we may not always get a lot of credit in that area, but we have some guys that are pretty mentally tough. And I have some young guys that have grown in that area. I think for us it all started -- this whole process for us started last year when we were down 0-2 in the first round, and we had a gut check game in Game 3 and another one in Game 4, and another one in Game 5, lost Game 6 and was fortunate enough to win Game 7. And obviously we weren't successful in the second round. But I think going back and looking at, you know, where we are, a lot of what's going on this year kind of started for us last year in the playoffs. Q. Avery, something almost like a prize fight where sometimes the fighter will come out slow and lose some rounds but know that they'll have their ability to last. Have you looked at your team, that because of the depth throughout that you'll be able to outlast a lot of teams, you do play a lot of guys, you've done a lot of different things, and that your depth will hold up? COACH AVERY JOHNSON: Well, I think that's been an asset for us. Especially when we've been healthy. There were times this year where we had four out of our top eight guys out. And pretty much it was Dirk and Damp. And Dirk and Damp were there for 81 and 82 games of the season, and everybody else was kind of a revolving door at some point in the season. So we just felt if we could get it back together and guys would continue to improve and we've had some guys that have significantly improved this year throughout the course of this year, we thought that our depth could be an asset for us. So we've seen that throughout the playoffs, that we have an opportunity to try to wear teams down, and hopefully that can continue to be an asset for us. But we need everybody to play well. We just can't have a lot of playing eight, nine, ten guys and them not play well. Q. How did their defensive assignment switches on Josh and Dirk affect you guys and how did you adjust to that in the second half? COACH AVERY JOHNSON: Again, Marion's guarded Dirk quite a bit. And now they switched Marion to Josh, and we kind of saw that a little bit in the last series. Bowen started off guarding Dirk and Howard got away from him a little bit. Then they tried to switch Bowen over to Howard. So when both of those guys are on top of their games they're pretty difficult to guard, especially when they're taking high percentage shots. Q. Seems like in the NBA teams have to take these primary steps first, go to the first round, you fail, go to the second round the next year. Do you think your team is on that verge of having gone through some of those playoff failures, that it's got the knowledge and the understanding of how to get to that next level? COACH AVERY JOHNSON: Well, I think a lot of times experience really helps and this was a team last year where we had several guys and Devin Harris and Erick Dampier and Jason Terry that had never been to the playoffs. One guy that had been in the league nine or ten years never been there. And Terry who was an obscurity in Atlanta, and Devin Harris was a rookie, didn't know whether he was coming or going sometimes. I think we had a lot of guys who were young and now this year we had Diop in the league three or four years and some people never really knew his name and Adrian Griffin who was with us during the year when we went to the Western Conference Finals, and Dirk from that team. So we just tried to have -- you know, sometimes you just gotta have guys together for a while, go through some things and experience some things. And we felt we've gotten some valuable experience over the last year and a half.
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