Mitch Johnson: Experience matters, but Spurs preach habits & consistency
The San Antonio head coach spoke ahead of Wednesday night’s Game 1 of the NBA Finals.
Video Transcript
Mitch, you've obviously embraced the notion that experience or inexperience or perception thereof doesn't matter throughout these playoffs for, for your team.
How much do you see the symmetry in that it applies to you as well, that this was, this is also your first time going through this in this role?
Are you appreciating the fact that you're sort of proving that experience is what you make of it?
you know, not to get into a rabbit hole, but I, I, I do think experience matters.
I just think a lot of times we use the term anticipating or expecting the use of it, not necessarily knowing how it's gonna be used.
So I draw upon a ton of experiences, not as a head coach in the NBA, but I've been around the game of basketball for 30 plus years.
and so I just think at times there's a lot of things that we talk about every single day more than experience.
When we were in Oct- met as a team in October until June 1st, if I talked If we kept track of the amount of times we talked about, again, I've said this, not to be redundant, but habits, consistency, execution, fundamentals, attention to detail, style of play, brand of basketball, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.
We've said all those words probably 100 times more than the word experience.
And so I just think it's allowed us to be, to anchor to those things when we have adversity or success or, instability or different things that you go through that you can't always control.
You tend to anchor to something, and I think at times, experience is something that's very well suited to be anchored to, if you use it in the right way as an individual or collective group.
And I just think for us, it can be a negative when you use it in the right way that we can't anchor to the experience as a group, but that's assuming you're using it in its best use of the word.
So not to talk in circles, but I think there are just different things that we anchor to at different times when we can't necessarily change what we can't control.
And so I think that's where sometimes an area comes through.
And yes, I do appreciate, having clarity on some of those other things, and some of those things have been established here before me and helped, pass down along the generations of our organization.
