One, you've got to be lucky. Freak injuries are the things that usually put you down sometimes. I don't know how Mo is, but I know KG is a guy who really took care of his body. During the season, he gets massages every day. He's done a lot of work with his body. He knows that's his tool, that's his profession. And he doesn't do anything that's going to harm his body, and I'm sure Mo Pete has to be the same way. |
Otherwise, I would have put him in. I think we're in a situation -- Dale is a guy we have to get ready, too. It's just kind of how we went. |
Our division was closed with 20-something games to go. The conference was closed with 10 or 12 games to go, so everyone turned their attention toward out west and the chase that was happening out there. |
Our guys have to be stimulated mentally. I've always said this team gets bored at times. When you're forced to react, forced to move, you don't really have a chance to maybe think about getting bored. You just go out and your instincts take over. |
Our level that we're playing at is sometimes where other people's mountains are at. |
Our main guys didn't have much rust because they've been playing. At least I've been able to keep an eye on them. The one thing you've got to appreciate about Atlanta is they play hard no matter what the score is. |
Our main guys played really well in the third quarter. Then we gave our young guys some fourth quarter experience against a team trying to get a win after losing 10 straight. It would have been better if they would have got the win but overall they did some good things and got some good experience in a close game. |
Our starters broke a sweat and didn't get too stale or hurt and I was happy to see the young guys play. It was good to see those guys in that type of situation. |
Palacio, Williams and Ostertag all hurt us in overtime. Those aren't the guys you'd expect it from. |
Part of it is teams that were not very good have gotten better, which makes for a much more competitive conference. What developed for a few years in the Western Conference has now come back to the East, where there aren't really any gimme games. |
People have been talking about 35-5 and the Tigers a lot lately, but the reason that people remember it is that they won the championship. If we don't win the title, no one will remember that we were 35-5. |
Players in that league are trying to get here. So a guy that is up here and goes down, they want a chance to see how hungry he really is. |
Right now, they're not as predictable. With Jermaine a lot, they came down, they threw it in the post, they played off him a lot. Here, they go to different people, they have a lot more ball movement, player movement. It's an offense geared toward everybody. I think Rick (Carlisle) has done a really good job with that group since they made that move. |
Rip did a good job of understanding where help might be, tried to send him to as much help as he could and contested pretty much most of his shots. |
Rip did a great job and Redd didn't have a lot of breathing room. One of the reasons we aren't a big fouling team is that we don't produce a lot of steals. We don't jump out and we don't gamble. We play position defense. That's why so often our man-to-man looks like a zone. We try to make teams beat us over the top and contest every shot. |