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It's no secret that San Antonio Spurs head coach Gregg Popovich knows where his team's strengths and weaknesses lie. So when his team did a poor job getting back in transition once again, he had no choice but to make another sarcastic rip.
“For us our bible begins with transition defense, and if it's not there, we're just not ready to go,” Popovich told reporters after the 125-104 Game 4 loss to the Houston Rockets on Sunday. “If you had seen clips of our transition D, you would have traded all the players and fired me by the end of the game. It was that bad.”
Popovich knows he's working with an aging squad and his best hope for coming out of this series is making the Rockets play his way instead of trying to run with them.
While the Spurs actually led the Rockets in fast break points 18-15, their Texas rivals were allowed to tee-up 43 three-point attempts, making 19 of them — a 36-point difference with the Spurs' outside shooting.
Mike D'Antoni‘s team put the pedal to the metal and led the whole way after getting off to a fast 27-14 lead in the first quarter, riding an emotional wave to even out the series 2-2, as the series shifts back to the AT&T Center on Tuesday.
“They were that intense,” Popovich added.
Houston's freedom relies on finding open shooter and Pop knows just that — allowing the Rockets to shoot three is allowing them to do what they've been successful doing the entire season and a recipe for disaster. The Spurs will have to hone in on shooters from Game 5 on if they hope to come away with a win and a little less scolding from their sharp-witted head coach.
