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
We're a good defensive team. We've just got to stop them earlier. We've got to figure out a way to get them out of their rhythm and their plays. We've got to make them take tough shots and force turnovers. I'm really excited about Game 3 being a different story.
We were able to wear them out a little bit at the end. Finally we rebounded and made some defensive stops toward the end.
Nobody here is thinking about the past and losing again. Everybody is very positive. We've got to stick together here to be more successful in Game Two and get rid of that so people will stop talking about it and bringing it up.
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.
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 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.
We are trying hard to bounce out of this funk. That's the only way we are going to do it. We have to win one or two games, loosen up, and play with confidence.
We had a lot of characters and maybe they were too much for him in the end.
We had to release all of that frustration. It was rewarding to see each one of us working so hard to get that reward of a win.
We wanted to jump on them quick because when you get hit first it's hard to jump back up. It'll be great if we're able to keep this up and go into the playoffs with this confidence we're playing with.
This was a good lesson for us. It lets us find out what's in store for us in the playoffs. Perhaps we have to step it up one notch.
Most of the guys were watching the NCAA Tournament (with Connecticut losing to George Mason). It was weird for a while. We didn't know what would happen.
That was the play we wanted to run. I took it hard to the rim and I knew I had enough time to make a move.
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.