Pau Gasol
Pau Gasol
Pau Gasol Sáezis a Spanish professional basketball player for the San Antonio Spurs of the National Basketball Association. He is a six-time NBA All-Star, and a four-time All-NBA selection, twice on the second team and twice on the third team. He has won two NBA championships, both with the Los Angeles Lakers. He was the NBA Rookie of the Year in 2002 with the Memphis Grizzlies, one of only two non-American NBA players to win that award. He is the...
NationalitySpanish
ProfessionBasketball Player
Date of Birth6 July 1980
CityBarcelona, Spain
CountrySpain
I'll take the spirit we had. I was just trying to be aggressive and physical.
I haven't felt any (pain) today and that's what I was looking for. We were looking for release from a lot of the fatigue and all that soreness that I had, and it's worked pretty well.
In the second half they had to do something. They started coming at me and I had to start passing the ball. If they want to play me straight up, I'm going to try to hurt them because I know I'm hard to stop when I'm one-on-one.
I guess they realized that in this league, to get far in the playoffs, you have to be more physical and play better at the defensive end. I don't think they did that in the past. It doesn't matter if you do it in the regular season. You got to do it in the playoffs. That's when all the eyes are on you.
Hopefully, next game, I'm going to start with a better confidence level, be more aggressive and really take it to them.
In the first half, I was aggressive and then in a very good scoring rhythm making buckets. In the second half, they had to do something. They started digging in and forcing me to pass the ball and I'm glad to do it.
We believe in ourselves. We believe that winning the third game changes the whole thing. We're so anxious to win that first game, and everybody keeps reminding you of the record that it's hard to get rid of. But I don't think it's much of what (Dallas) did. It's more about what we didn't do well enough to hang in there and have a chance to win.
We have to come out hard in Game 3, really establish ourselves at home and get a win there. The whole scenario changes then, but we've got to do it. We've got to make it happen. I'm really excited about that, going back home with our fans and getting this monkey, that is really getting heavy, off of our back.
We are just not able to finish games right now. We are not playing the way we should down the stretch. It might be a confidence thing.
We're not trying to slow down. We're trying to keep our minds in a competitive mode. We'll face whoever we have to face.
We were able to wear them out a little bit at the end. Finally we rebounded and made some defensive stops toward the end.
Unfortunately, we're not machines. Absolutely, we know what's going on.
We didn't seem to feel comfortable. That was the feeling I had during the whole game. We couldn't get to our offense. We couldn't get to what we wanted out of the plays we ran. It really wasn't a consistent offense on our part. We were very sloppy.
We have to be concerned a little bit, but at the same time we have to do a better job overall in playing with a little bit more hustle.