One of the perks of covering the San Antonio Spurs last season was getting to know more about the
people behind the silver and black jerseys. Sometimes when interviewing players, you recognize something they say as special, so you won’t see any canned answers or quotes here. These are a few of my favorite quotes from my interviews last season.
Gary Neal
On the Rodeo Road Trip:
“This will be something new for me. I really don’t know how I’m going to pack for this. We got a break in the middle after the first three games so we get to come back to San Antonio and rest up and repack and reload our bags, but you know this is new for me, it’s a new experience so hopefully it doesn’t beat us up too bad.”
On James Anderson:
“James coming back is definitely going to help us. He’s a skilled scorer and in the NBA you know you need as many players as you can especially in situations where you play back to backs. We’ve been 4-4 on back-to-backs and maybe if James was there it would give us some more energy maybe he wouldve helped us with a spark and we would’ve won two of those games and been 6-2 instead of 4-4 so it’s definitely great to have more firepower so we embrace James and were happy he’s back.”
Steve Novak
“It would be tough to find a better place, that’s for sure. I was very happy. You know I was with Dallas, then I was released and picked up here. If I would’ve picked a spot, I couldn’t pick a better one.”
“The guys are great, it’s a veteran team, it’s a professional team. It’s really all business. You come in and do your job and you’re loved. I think they’re definitely a good group of guys off the court too, which is huge.”
Richard Jefferson
“Well, that’s the playoffs. I think every game is going to get more and more physical, it’s going to keep getting chippy. Whenever you see somebody in consecutive games, it really starts to get annoying looking at their face or hearing them.”
RC Buford
“Tonight was probably one of the most difficult nights in Spurs history since we’ve been here. To move a player like George Hill, who’s meant so much to our team, our culture, our locker room was one of the most difficult decisions that we’ve made.”
“I don’t think its any secret what Pop has said and we’ve talked about since the end of the season. We’re probably going to impact our roster via trade more than we are although through the draft now seem to have been and it was a combination. I think organizationally, we’ve just been willing to look in areas that maybe in the past we would have maintained a different position on our roster.”
Come back later this week for part three of some of the lost quotes from the 2010-2011 Spurs’ season. Click here if you missed part one.
