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
They double-teamed me almost every time I got the ball. Obviously, I'd like to have a better shooting night, but give their defense credit.
It's all very positive. If Mike would get that, and me making All-Star team, it says how well we're doing collectively. We wouldn't be getting any individual awards or respect if collectively we weren't doing a good job.
I couldn't get going. I was just a little bit out of rhythm. It took me a while to get myself into the game and get myself comfortable out there and play at the level I'm supposed to play.
It was just a bad game. We were unable to win when we needed to. It was frustrating the way we started game. We weren't being aggressive. And we gave them life. We let them believe they could win and the crowd carried them. We have to start playing with a better effort.
It was good the way we shared the ball tonight and made shots.
The turnovers cause you to lose control of the game. It was frustrating. We were turning the ball over and giving them the ball back without making them work for it.
I'll take the spirit we had. I was just trying to be aggressive and physical.
It's hard to play them when they're shooting the ball with that confidence. They did a good job running the ball and running 1,000 pick-and-rolls and they made their shots.
They started doubling and we kind of stopped running plays for the post-ups. We kind of got lost a little bit. Especially in the second quarter, we got out of our game for a few minutes and that really cost us.
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.
Navarro had a difficult start to the game, but he slowly recovered and scored 35 points. But I have to say, Croatia were a great team and you have to feel for them because they lost their cool at the end. It was down to frustration.
I knew they were not very fast off their feet and that they are very foul-prone - they put you on the line a lot. I knew if I tried to take them off the dribble and attacked early, it would open up for me and my teammates.
I see happy people on this team, who are excited to come to work and be a part of this team, working together to get somewhere. I don't see selfish guys, who are worrying about themselves and their situations. We have guys happy to share and doing whatever it takes to win. That is what we've lacked in previous years.
It was just overall, a game that felt really good. I was very aware of it, I'm not going to lie. I knew that I needed the assist.