Daniel Gibson interview after Finals Game 3
InsideHoops.com NewsWire | June 13, 2007
In the NBA Finals of the 2007 NBA Playoffs the San Antonio Spurs lead the Cleveland Cavaliers 3 games to 0. Tuesday night the Cavs, playing in Cleveland for the first time this series, put up a good fight, but the Spurs held on for a 75-72 win. Cavs guard Daniel Gibson started in place of the banged up Larry Hughes but fell apart and played as badly as Hughes had been playing. The kid shot 1-of-10 and in 36 minutes had just 2 points and 3 rebounds. Here's what Gibson said after the game:
Q: What happened tonight?
Gibson: It's kind of hard to explain. We haven't really had time to really let it set in and look over film and really see what went wrong. We just weren't making shots and I'll give them a lot of credit ... they came in and won the game.
Q: When did you find out you were going to start?
Gibson: A little bit before the game.
Q: What was the overall feeling walking back [to the locker room] tonight after the game?
Gibson: Not a good one. It's a really bad taste in our mouth. It felt like tonight, in front of our home crowd, we were going to have an opportunity to give get back into this series but we let them get another leg up. But the series still isn't over until somebody wins four.
Q: Why so many three-point attempts? The whole team obviously struggled tonight on that...
Gibson: I think we felt we might have had a couple of good looks. But I definitely thought we could have drove the ball a bit more ... as long as we step in and try to shoot them with confidence.
Q: How damaging was that stretch were you had [at least] five opportunities to cut it to two?
Gibson: It was a tough stretch for us. We fought hard to get in a position were we could win the game and then a couple shots didn't fall for us, but there were a lot of other things that led up to that series where things could have been a lot different at the end of the game.
Q: Do you think the fact that you started tonight threw you off your game a bit?
Gibson: No, I wouldn't say that. I just felt, you know, I didn't make shots. I was comfortable shooting the ball, I was comfortable out there playing with the starting lineup ... [the shots] just didn't go down for me.
Q: If I would have told you Parker and Ginobili would have had as bad a game as they did and you would still lose, would you believe me?
Gibson: Yeah, it would definitely be a surprise. We got a lot better defensively. In order to win, you've got to score points.
Q: What more can you do at this point?
Gibson: We played a nice game defensively. We did a lot of good things on the defensive end, so if we can correct some of the things we didn't do well on offensive -- make a couple of shots -- maybe that game turns out a little different.
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