The San Antonio Spurs topped the Chicago Bulls on Friday night 129-124. Keldon Johnson led the team with 33 points. Six other Spurs were in double-figures. Jakob Poeltl had 21 points, Zach Collins 16, Jeremy Sochan 13, Josh Richardson 12, Tre Jones 11, Blake Wesley 10. The Spurs are back in action against the Timberwolves on Sunday.
Postgame Quotes:
Spurs Head Coach Gregg Popovich
(Keldon Johnson …)
"He added the 3-point shot to his game, but he’s making better decisions with the ball, shooting good shots, concentrating on his defense. He’s doing a fine job.”
(On Tre jones’ Mental toughness…)
"That’s who he is. He’s just a stud. He’s going to do everything he can to win. Doesn’t matter what it is. He’s got a lot of those traits that Manu had. He just does things to win basketball games because of his heart.”
(On Jakob Poeltl…)
“For us, he’s kind of boring the way David Robinson got boring. We’d say, “What did David do?” And you look at the stats and there’s 24 points, 12 rebounds, 4 blocked shots, that kind of thing. Jakob does the same thing. He gives it every single night. Very solid. He definitely anchors our defense.”
Spurs Guard Keldon Johnson
(On the team’s mental toughness…)
“We’re a family. We stay together. We went out on the court and played hard. We’ve been playing hard all year, and we continued that tonight. We stuck to our game plan, we executed, and we got the win. The Bulls are a great team. They have great players. We went out there and just executed and did what Pop told us to do.”
(On guarding DeMar DeRozan down the stretch…)
“It’s tough. He’s one of those players where he’s close to unguardable, because he can shoot the midrange so well, but at the same time, he’s so crafty. He can get to the bucket. It’s just a matter of staying solid, playing good team defense. That’s what we did, and he missed some shots. That’s all we can ask for coming down the stretch to give us an opportunity to win.”
Spurs Center Zach Collins
(On coming into form…)
“ I feel like I just took a few more shots than I have all year, and I just made a little bit more shots. So far, defense, passing and honestly shooting has been good all season, but tonight I just took a few more shots and they went in tonight. I’m happy about that. Hopefully, I keep this rolling.”
(On finding Jeremy Sochan during the game…)
"He seems to find those little areas to be open. I hit him earlier, too, when the play was kind of dead. He just happened to be in the right spot. He seems to be doing that, which is crazy for a rookie that young. Super fun to play with.”
(On the team responding and continuing to play well…)
“Every night, we believe we can win no matter who we’re playing. We’re super confident in each other, and the way we play is fun, it’s contagious. We all feed off each other and we know that to be successful, everyone’s got to touch the ball, everyone’s got to run the floor and cut hard. We love playing that way. It’s about us believing we can play every night. We did that tonight, again.