Vs: San Antonio Spurs - Manun raportti
Koska en pääse lähtemään San Antonioon ennen kuin kesäkuussa, Manu Ginobili hoitaa raportointia puolestani.
SAN ANTONIO - Manu Ginobili
- It's hard to rest after a night like that. It was late because of the game itself, that went to double overtime which is not that common. I made it home at 1:30AM to eat, because after the press conference I couldn't eat at the arena. After such a game it's not easy to calm down. A few hours go by until you start to relax, get back to normal after so much tension… Until you relax, it gets late. I fell asleep around 4.
Since I imagine somebody will ask, let me clarify that Pop didn't come over to make breakfast. And it's also not literal what he said that he stopped coaching me a while ago. If he has to yell at me for something, it happens, of course.
About the last 3 pointer at the end, I can't add much more to what I've already said. I had to set a screen and get away. That inbounds play was not drawn for me, but for Tony or Boris. There was a moment of confusion, I ended up wide open and I waved at Kawhi. When it goes in it's great, but it could've not gone in and it would've been very tough. The important thing is that we saved ourselves the heartbreak at the end. Imagine if after all that immense effort we would lose the game! It would've been tough on the team's morale.
Besides that 3 pointer that went in, it was a very poor shooting night for me. And I finished the game really tired. It was a devastating game for everyone, and I'm sure for them too, because Stephen Curry ended up playing 58 minutes. In this last month and a half, since I came back from injury, I've not played over 20 minutes and against Golden State I played 36. I was dead. Both on the physical and mental aspects, it was a exhausting game.
Today I had to go back to talk to the media, but we didn't do much more than stretch legs. Massages and regeneration. It didn't make sense to practice. Afterwards, a nap and try to recover, nothing else. Tomorrow we'll get back together and we'll see how things go from here. Because if there's any conclusions to draw from the first game is that they were the better team. They played better than us both on offense and defense. They defended us well and we could only go on a run on the last quarter. It's clear we're going to have to watch video of what happened and start adjusting things.
It's possible that after a few games on the series that might not be all that necessary, but we're talking about games 5, 6, or 7, if we get there. For now, we gotta keep preparing.
And I'm not talking specifically about Curry. Against him we tried everything we could do. Kawhi Leonard did a good job, but he kept on scoring, so we tried with Boris for a while, trying to put somebody with more size in front of him. The reality is that when he goes on a streak it's very difficult to stop him and there's not a lot you can do. He can shoot from far away and it's tough to stop him. What he did in the third quarter was amazing.
I'm sure we'll try something else, but we've not talked about it yet. What's good is that whatever we do, we'll do it happily after winning the first game, which was very tough and very important.