FINALS NOTES Avery Johnson is killing the Knicks softly. After his penetration helped bury the Knicks in Game 4, Johnson came to praise the Knicks yesterday, saying he knows they will not go quietly into the NBA night.
“When you talk about perseverance, man, those guys can persevere,” the Spurs’ point guard said of the Knicks, who trail 3-1 going into Game 5 tonight at the Garden.
No team has ever come back from such a deficit in the Finals.
“They have been weathering storms all year long, they need to write a book, it would be great reading for people who have gone through difficult times in another area of their life,” Johnson said. *
Everyone seems to love to bring up Gregg Popovich’s military background – almost as much as he seems to love dodging questions about it.
“Whenever I get asked about the military, I always smile,” said Popovich, an Air Force Academy product. “If you talk to anybody at the academy while I was there for four years and you started talking about me as a military man, there would be guffaws everywhere. I wasn’t great.” *
Knicks are talking the good fight but they must find a way to score late in the game. For the series, Allan Houston is shooting 29 percent in the fourth quarter. He is shooting .452 the other three quarters.
Houston and Latrell Sprewell must find a way to counter the Spurs’ double team. “The key for us is to make the correct passes out of the double teams,” Houston said.
In addition, the Knicks have yet to go to the big-guard lineup that Jeff Van Gundy has said he might like to try. Van Gundy has talked about pairing Houston and Sprewell but has not done that even though Chris Childs is hobbled by a sore knee. The Knicks were repeatedly hurt by Johnson’s penetration Wednesday.
“I said all along that’s really up to Jeff,” Houston said. “All I can say is that Spree and I are both prepared for it. And we’re comfortable with it. We feel we can be effective if we’re called upon. But we’re not going to be the ones making that decision.” *
Popovich was asked about “butterflies” before tonight’s game. “I feel like [Allen] Iverson felt. Someone said to him, ‘you got butterflies inside?’ And he said, ‘No, I got buzzards.'” *Larry Johnson on his 2-for-8 night in Game 4 and the fact he appeared to pass up some open 3s: “We had our shots,” he said. “The Spurs got a little something on me with them 3s; they’re rotating, boy, they’re getting there.
It’s one thing for a 6-8 guy to be rotating, another thing for a 7-footer to be rotating. They can do a hell of a job bothering that shot, but I’m doing a hell of a job missing, too.”
Johnson was 0-for-3 from 3-point land. *
Steve Kerr on what the Spurs’ attitude must be: “If you want to win, you have to have a sense of urgency. And I think we’ll have that. You never want anything to go longer than it should because if they win, they’ve got renewed hope and they’ve got momentum.”