Victor Wembanyama<\/a> said. \u201cWe need to approach the game with a better mental state. We just need to play our game. We just need to be normal.\u201d<\/p>\nNormal?<\/p>\n
\u201c\u2018Normal\u2019 means trusting each other, trusting the basketball gods, trusting the game plan, executing, and not relying on talent so much to make shots or to save the day,\u201d Wembanyama said. \u201cWe\u2019ve been playing a certain way all season. We\u2019ve been successful this way. There\u2019s no reason to change the day the finals start.\u201d<\/p>\n
It was easy for the Spurs to find areas to clean up.<\/p>\n
For the Knicks these days, that\u2019s considerably tougher.<\/p>\n
They\u2019re 12-0 in their last 12 games, the third team to do that in a single postseason. The other two \u2014 San Antonio in 1999 and Golden State in 2017 \u2014 were NBA champions. The Knicks are certainly playing like a championship-capable team, but star guard Jalen Brunson insists that New York can\u2019t subscribe to any sort of thinking that suggests the job is done and a parade is inevitable.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s all about just getting better every single day, keep chipping away, keep chipping away, being 1% better,\u201d said Brunson, who led all scorers with 30 points in his finals debut Wednesday. \u201cWhen you take steps back, how can you improve? … Having that mentality and focus and approach I think allows us to still be students of the game and still find ways to learn, even through wins, and I think we need to continue to do that.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Knicks were coming off their second nine-day break between series \u2014 an unintended consequence of sweeping Philadelphia in the Eastern Conference semifinals and Cleveland in the East finals \u2014 and handled it just fine.<\/p>\n
But New York\u2019s Mikal Bridges knows Game 2 will be better.<\/p>\n
\u201cI don\u2019t think our Game 1s, even though we won, have been great at all,\u201d Bridges said. \u201cIt\u2019s tough to assimilate the emotional aspect, how physical it\u2019s going to be when you\u2019re in practice every day, besides being in those games. It\u2019s tough. … Now, we kind of got a rhythm. We\u2019ve got to be better and I know we will be Game 2.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Spurs hope they will as well.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s not must-win time for San Antonio, but going to New York in a 2-0 hole would make the challenge of winning the finals considerably more daunting. The Spurs have handled all the adversity that has come their way so far in the playoffs, and now have to answer that bell again.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s very reassuring,\u201d Wembanyama said. \u201cWe know we\u2019re not here by chance. We\u2019ve been through some weird \u2014 what do you call it? \u2014 weird situations, whatever. Yes, it\u2019s reassuring to know that these guys, the 18 guys we got, are built this way. They are resilient.\u201d<\/p>\n
___<\/p>\n
AP NBA: https:\/\/apnews.com\/hub\/nba<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"SAN ANTONIO (AP) \u2014 The road to the NBA Finals was not exactly smooth for the San Antonio…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":844721,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[40],"tags":[24114,7195,3663,83095,1260,6326,3578,405,403,3122,1268,23077,1345,7202,3138,62,358,5028,67,132,68,4714],"class_list":["post-844720","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nba","tag-jalen-brunson","tag-mikal-bridges","tag-minnesota","tag-mitch-johnson","tag-nba","tag-nba-basketball","tag-nba-finals","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-city","tag-new-york-knicks","tag-oklahoma-city-thunder","tag-portland","tag-portland-pilots","tag-san-antonio","tag-san-antonio-spurs","tag-sports","tag-texas","tag-tx-state-wire","tag-united-states","tag-unitedstates","tag-us","tag-victor-wembanyama"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/116694154354832297","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/844720","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=844720"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/844720\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/844721"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=844720"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=844720"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=844720"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}