Practice Report: ‘Everybody just got to lose theyself in the team’

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Scotty Brooks can play around with Xs and Os and switching defensive assignments and making whatever other changes he wants, though Scotty admits at this point in the season no one really changes much of anything, just a tweak here and there.

And besides Brooks knows most times it comes down to this, “we played well (Thursday night) it’s as simple as that.”

And the Spurs didn’t.

When a team plays well it’s also usually playing hard and that’s what the Thunder did in Game 3 also and OKC center Kendrick Perkins believes as hard as he and his teammates played Thursday night they will need to ramp it up even more in Game 4.

“Just play a little harder tonight, I think the focus still has to be there and just keep playin’ for one another.”

On a day like today, getting ready for a game like this, a game that could turn the series one direction or another Perk also believes there is no room for thoughts about anything else but the business at hand, “I feel like tonight is one of them nights that everybody just gotta lose theyself in the team, no matter who the hero is who scores the most points, just everybody do they job tonight.”

Everyone doing their job seems simple enough but against a team like the Spurs that can become complicated quickly. That’s why the focus has to be razor sharp tonight.

“It’s a little thing but it’s huge, the focus is all a mental thing, you gotta start focusing in like right now. So it starts right now, getting’ locked in for the rest of the day.”

Perkins has talked to his teammates about that process of focusing in early, “a young ball club especially you can’t just figure you can turn it on an hour before the game and think, ‘all right now I’m gonna lock-in,’ when you been playin’ around or something all day.”

For Perkins, a family man with young children, that process can be difficult  but knowing how important it is he tends to shut everything and everyone else out.

“I just kinda stay to myself all day, I don’t have many people to talk to and stuff like that so I just stay to myself and I may watch a little film when I go home but other than that I’m just locked in, staying by myself, bein’ real quiet, not around too much, just stayin out the way.”

He may stay out of the way of everyone at home but he plans to be in the way of just about every San Antonio Spur tonight.

Locked in…focused…ready.

SCOTT BROOKS

KENDRICK PERKINS