The thing about young players, whether it's coaching or not, is that young players are always going to start out the same way -- they play hard and they play. That's who they are. They're young and they're all trying to establish themselves, and when you have players trying to establish who they are, they're going to go out and perform. Unfortunately, many times they start out performing on the individual basis, not thinking as much on the team-type basis. |
The thing I love about these guys is that, when we lose, they have taken it hard and decided to bounce back. This was a great win after a poor performance last night. |
The thing is -- like it or not -- a lot of teams don't prepare much to play against zones, ... They don't have as expansive an offense as they do for man-to-man. |
The thing is, we're not going to change. You have to understand something: This team has a lot of playoff experience. They've been to the Finals the last two years. They're not playing differently than what they've played. That's how they play. |
The thing you have to watch out for is if you sit a guy, and his leg gets weaker. We're not going to put him in a position where he's going to hurt his ankle more. People out there, they don't know how bad the ankle is. It's way too easy for everyone to say, ?Just sit him and not have him play.' But players work 82 games to get into a rhythm, to play well in the playoffs. |
The way this team is built, our bench guys are meant to play together in clusters with our main group. When you put all five guys on the floor, they're not as effective as when three of those guys play with a couple of starters. |
Their organization has always been very first-class. Opening night, sometimes they get really excited. Some of their people, they just really weren't quite thinking all the way. |
Then we'll reevaluate him. But I would say it would be very doubtful that he would play. |
There are no unknowns at this point. But from their standpoint, the X-factor is that they are a team that takes as many three-pointers as anybody. If they get hot like they can, they can cause you a lot of problems. But, one of our strengths all year was defending the three. Hope that continues. |
There is no Shaq-stopper, |
There's a fine line. As I told our guys, it's not a matter or winning or losing, it's playing good, and if you play good, you win. |
There's always an energetic bounce - whether good, bad or indifferent - because a new voice, a new energy comes in. Anytime a coach takes over a team, there's always that initial excitement that carries over to the team. |
There's no question that Ben has been as dominating as a center in what he does as anybody in the league. I told him he's kind of like a middle linebacker in football. He patrols that middle and goes from an aggressive standpoint. |
These are the dog days, because the season seems like it's never going to end. You have to take every game one game at a time. When you're on a big run and winning games, that's the biggest challenge you have -- can you withstand the pressure night in and night out of what teams throw at you? |
These are the dog days. The season seems like it will never end at this point. But it seems like no matter who we play, they play pretty good against us. |