We played 82 games that we considered playoff basketball. That's the way we're going to play. We're going to defend, we're going to move the ball offensively, and that's why I told our guys. |
We played like a well-oiled machine. And I think there's a sense that if it comes down to it, you can turn it back on. |
We ran about three different options last night and had some pretty good success with some of them. |
We ran some things we hadn't run in a while, just to dust them off a little bit and do them in a game-type situation. |
We said going in the idea was to not get anybody hurt and make sure that the guys we had to play broke a sweat and didn't get too stale and give our young guys an opportunity to play in a heated situation against some top players. |
We said he was feeling good, so we just let him go. He had 37 points, nine assists, one turnover -- I mean, that's a pretty nice statement for the All-Star team, or whatever. |
We seemed to lose our energy. They were more aggressive and the team that's more aggressive is going to get the loose balls, get the calls and have things fall their way. |
We sense what's coming. We know what's going to come here in two weeks. |
We share the ball, |
We stayed in the game because of Chauncey and Rip (Hamilton). |
We still only had 10 turnovers for the game. They were magnified as far as when they happened a little bit. When you're playing well, they try to throw everything at you. From that standpoint, as I say, the more things that are thrown at you, the better prepared you are come playoff time. |
We surrounded (Kevin). We brought in two veteran players in Sam Mitchell and Terry Porter that we thought were two very professional type individuals that would show him how to handle practice situations, what it was to be professionals, to prepare for practice, to prepare for games, how to deal as far as off the floor, not to put yourself in any awkward-type situations. And then we tried to communicate with him. Our biggest thing was we gave him enough responsibility on the court that he was able to perform, yet still improve. |
We took, I thought, too many quick shots. We took 50 shots with one pass or less out of 75 shots, which for us is way too many. And that's one of the reasons we only had 17 assists. Even though we won by 18, they made a couple of runs at us, and I think we have a big area of improvement to get more people involved offensively and move the ball a little bit more. |
We tried to get Carlos on the floor a lot more with Rip (Hamilton). He got a lot of guys involved and overall did a great job for us, even though he fouled out. |
We try to talk a little bit, keep in touch every now and then, follow each other's career. It's a unique situation. You have two guys who played with each other, went four years together. |