Mark Daigneault | San Antonio Spurs Post-Game | Jan. 19, 2022
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00:00Coach, we'll go questions in the room and they will take it to the zoom. Go
00:02ahead with questions in the room.
00:06Yeah,
00:07I'm back.
00:09Right. How about
00:11that?
00:15It's always an element. Mason. This is always an element, but they were just
00:19kind of a step faster than us from the jump. Give them a lot of credit. They
00:23were in the play. Um, they played with great pace. Felt like we were behind
00:27the ball a lot, uh, on the defensive end of the floor, especially, you know,
00:31first half. Um, and then, you know, offensively, I thought they were pretty
00:35geared up and we got a hard time creating the same pace.
00:37And I know, you know, it's not necessarily that result in the score,
00:41but that fourth quarter turn around and help the 12 points and really close
00:46the game really strong. Just what did you think of that effort right there?
00:50Yeah, I mean, we got to play all the way through. You know, you only get 82
00:53games and you only get 48 minutes in each one. Uh, and so, you know, we want
00:57to take advantage of all those opportunities and those are opportunities
01:00to develop opportunities to kind of save who we are. But, you know, that group
01:04that finished it.
01:06Mark, you often say that everything was generated through the heat. Um, I know
01:10the three point shooting probably stands out for them, but what could you all
01:14have done better to prevent the ball from getting beat? They were really
01:17efficient down there, too.
01:19Yeah, it's a little bit of everything, but I thought their point of attack,
01:22like I said, this was with a lot of pace and we're behind the initial attack
01:26a lot of the night. They were able to get in there on the first attack a lot
01:29of times, which is pretty uncharacteristic of our defense. And
01:32then, um, once they got in there, they kept the ball ahead of the defense,
01:35you know, what good teams do. Um, again, give them a lot of credit because
01:39they were willing to make every pass and every play to get a good shot tonight,
01:43you know, which is again, what good teams do. And it would have required a
01:46much better defensive thrust out of us to slow them down. Mark, most of your
01:50guys' recent losses have been pretty close. During a game like this, are
01:55you sensing anything that's possible to get around to sort of reach the ball
01:59out? Um, you know, I try not to, um, overreact to one game in any direction,
02:04you know, try not to look at it in the back, especially like we're in the
02:07midst of a road trip in the midst of, um, the middle of the season. And,
02:11you know, you're going to have nights where you just kind of have a certain
02:14pop in your step and you have some nights where it's like tonight where
02:16you don't. And there's a lot of nights in the middle, you know, those those
02:20are the ones that you got to kind of generate your own juice. So, um, never
02:24try to overreact to one game. Uh, you know, certainly want to be aware of
02:28trends, though, you know, and certainly don't want this to be, you know, we
02:30don't want to start slow or be slower than our opponent, but that hasn't been
02:33the case for, you know, this recent stretch. And so, you know, we'll learn
02:37from this, take the lessons off and move on. Some of the conferences related
02:42to that, you know, starting tonight, which 19 points did we have? Yeah.
02:46What do you think about?
02:50Yeah, I think, um, you know, offensively, he found kind of his cracks
02:53inside the flow of the offense. Like when he had those bigger scoring names
02:56earlier on, he wasn't doing anything outside of his role. And I thought
03:00tonight similar. Um, and you know what gets him? You can't score 19 points
03:05unless you're on the court. And what gets him on the court is defense. And
03:08I thought he did a really good job in Dallas came here tonight, you know, in
03:12pursuits and guarding Bunsen as a secondary handler and sometimes
03:15dodged. And, um, you know, this was a game where we felt we really needed
03:19that. So getting him on court and getting the game was a priority. The
03:24jumping areas. I was sure he's averaging three or five across the floor.
03:27What? So what has he done to take that next step? We're just playing against
03:31him, but I wouldn't sleep. Uh, I think stylistically, he's the same player.
03:35And I think, you know, he's done everything here about a year. Uh, is
03:39he's a great worker and a great guy and easy to get on from that standpoint.
03:43And I think, you know, when you've got guys that are high character and
03:47committed to their craft and they attack the program and they're above
03:51the team and they compete every night, like improvements pretty predictable.
03:56And that's why I'm so optimistic about a lot of our guys. I think a lot of
03:58our guys have those qualities as well. But every from all accounts, that's
04:02kind of the guy commits and so to see him improve on the trajectory that he
04:05has is not surprising based on the kind of degrees of the person.
04:10What else in the room? We got one question on the zoom coach, Andrew
04:12Schlecht. Go ahead with your question.
04:16I was curious from your vantage point shape at a really rough night
04:19offensively. I just was curious from your vantage point what you saw that
04:23they were doing to slow him down. Yeah, I thought they did a nice job on
04:27our whole team and certainly him. I thought he had some in and outs. You
04:30know, I thought he had a couple of plays there that, you know, normally
04:32go down didn't for whatever reason. So some of it's just like the major
04:36element of it. But I just thought, you know, at the point of attack
04:40tonight, they want to point of attack, you know, defensively, they were
04:44ahead of us at the point of attack and offensively our point of attack.
04:47They were able to kind of stall what normally starts the blender for us.
04:50And I think when we're playing with that kind of pace, even against
04:53really quality defenses, like we played the last couple games when we're
04:56playing with that kind of pace and we can generate good rhythm and
05:00everybody can benefit from that. And I thought we just didn't have enough
05:03possessions like that tonight. And I thought, you know, everybody's
05:05suffered from that cliche.
05:08All right. Thank you, Coach. All right. We'll bring players next.