The Spurs came up short against the Philadelphia 76ers on Sunday. San Antonio lost 115 to 109. Tyrese Maxey led the 76ers with 42 points. The Spurs were led by Jakob Poeltl with 39. The Spurs are back in action on Tuesday night against the Rockets in Houston.

Post Game Comments:

Spurs Coach Gregg Popovich

(Opening Statement)

“We’ve seen this story before. You can’t spot a team a quarter in the NBA and come back when you’re in the situation we’re in. Once again, I’m proud of the way they hung in. They didn’t give in, they kept going, they had their chances at the end. You make it very difficult when you spot somebody a quarter, and we did it again. Same thing we did last time we played them. We didn’t shoot well in the first half. We shot a little bit better as the game went along, but down the stretch, we had a couple of defensive errors. Two really gross defensive errors, and we took it from a four to six-point game and took it out of reach. They still hung in there, and it’s all great stuff, but we have to learn to compete from the get-go. Be physical. Be aggressive. That has been a weakness all year, that we haven’t been consistent in that regard. Jakob Poeltl is one guy who brings it every minute that he’s on the court. He’s unbelievable and deserves a lot of credit for what he does out there.”

Spurs Center Jakob Poeltl

(On battling it out with Joel Embiid…)

“He’s tough to guard, as we said. I tried to make it as tough as possible on him. Today we played pretty decent team defense on him for most of that game, but he made some tough shots as well.”

(On 16th double-double of the season…)

“As I’ve always said, I try to do a lot of the little things for the team. I try to be a back anchor on defense. I try to crash offensively every chance that I get. I think that’s just part of my role. My scoring has picked up a little bit this year with a lot of our scoring from the past couple of years being gone from the team. A couple of us other guys had to step up, and I kind of took that on myself plus a couple of our other guys, too. Players are trying to step it up, be more aggressive on offense, and score more.”

(On playing with Dejounte Murray…)

“I’m very comfortable playing with DJ. We’ve worked on it a lot the past couple of years, especially this past summer just trying to build that chemistry. I think that’s one of our best weapons as a team on offense right now, is that pick-and-roll between me and DJ. He’s very good at finding that pocket, creating shots for himself, creating shots on the weak side. I try to be aggressive out of that pocket, so that if they sink in too much to try to find the shooter on the weak side, I’ll be aggressive and finish.”

(On slow start against Philadelphia…)

“We made a couple of defensive mistakes in the first half. I think we were very much in the game for most of that first half. At the end of the first half, it was a five-nothing run that we gave away that made it look a little worse than it actually was. Obviously, performance overall in the second half was better than the first, but we have to work on that and come out more ready. Overall, we just have to build on our performances. This wasn’t a bad performance. There were just a couple of aspects that need improving.”

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