The Spurs fell to the Portland Trail Blazers on Wednesday night, losing 128-112. Damian Lillard led the Trail Blazers with 37 points. The Spurs' top scorer was Keldon Johnson with 25. The Spurs are back in action on Saturday when they travel to Mexico to play the Houston Rockets.
Post Game Comments:
Spurs Head Coach Gregg Popovich
(On how playing with Damien Lillard gives an educational feel for the team…)
“He’s amazing. I was very happy he was on the Olympic team. Not happy tonight, but happy then. Mostly, the story of the game is we spotted him at half and then we came to play. In the first half, I thought we were pretty dead on both ends of the floor. Not a lot of oomph and juice, but coming out the third quarter, second half, we did a good job. You can’t spot a team that can score the way they do at half. That’s for sure.”
(On how he thought Charles Bassey looked in his first start…)
“He’s fine. He’s just a young guy who’s trying to find his place in the league. Those guys are very experienced. Chauncey [Billups] does a great job with them, and they’re going to be a tough match for everybody. So under those circumstances, I thought Charles did a great job. A lot of the young guys have a good education, especially Jeremy, trying to guard [Damien] Lillard a little bit. Even Tre [Jones]. Nobody works harder than Tre. So, it was a good education game.”
Spurs Forward Doug McDermott
(On if being a vet entails reminding the younger players what it's like in the NBA…)
“Yeah. I mean, There’s no nights off, that’s for sure. You have a lot of great players in this league that are the best players in the world, so you have to be ready every time you step on that floor, because it can be tough. We have a great group of guys, great vets, like you said, [Josh Richardson], and obviously adding Stanley today was good for our locker room. We’re just going to continue to plug away at this.”
(On what they can do better coming out of the shoot…)
“It’s defense. It’s the controllables. The stuff we can control. We can’t control if the shot is going to go in every time. It’s more so our effort, our communication, and just flat-out grunt, as [Gregg Popovich] says. We can control those things. We can’t control the ball going in every time. So, if we can just continue to focus on those things, we’re going to get off to better starts.”
Spurs Guard/Forward Keldon Johnson
(On tonight being a learning game for the young guys chasing Damian Lillard…)
“Little things like staying connected at all times. He’ such a phenomenal player. He put on a clinic tonight. Definitely, we’ll look at some film and definitely learn some things like we do from every game. I feel like those guys, guarding him personally. Him being such a good scorer, you learn different things that you can get away with. If you push up on him, he knows how to create the foul. He can hit threes. He's a three-level scorer. Defensively, just learning so many things and he moves well, so well without the ball.”
(On the difference on defense with having a three-day break …)
“We got some bodies back, and we've just been talking more. Obviously, we can talk more than what we did tonight. Second half, we picked it up. Our motto is 48. We've got to tackle all 48 minutes regardless of if the game is going good or bad. We did that in the second half. We got back in the game, and we kind of ran out of juice. I think that we've been talking and just competing. Just going out there, just fighting every minute of the game.”