You can't overlook everything he's done for this organization and for me as a head coach. |
You don't want to make excuses. We weren't sharp. Part of that was them. Part of that was us. …We lost our energy, but they were the more aggressive team. |
You have to have a lot of character to win on the road. You have to have players who love to accept challenges and are extremely competitive. It's almost like they enjoy playing on the road more than playing at home. |
You have to have players that really accept challenges, that like to compete and really like to play on the road more than they do at home. It is more challenging. It's tough to win on the road, no matter who you play. |
You have to try to change up how you defend him. You can't play the same way. |
You have to understand that [the Grizzlies] compete hard, and mental fatigue and mental mistakes happen. But we did not want them to have the ball in their hands to win the game. |
You have to understand, we've played 82 games to get here; 82 games of playoff-type basketball. People talk about the pressure of being the hunted. Well, we've been the hunted since we were 8-0. It's been like our opponents' Super Bowl every time they play us. I think the regular season prepared us for what's at hand. |
You know, early in the year everybody was questioning his minutes. But given his history, there was a reason we weren't playing him a lot. We wanted to get him fresh and ready for now, and you see he's playing at an unbelievably high level. |
You know, I've never lost an opener. |
You know, it's a long season. I could have gotten on the guys and tried to raise some emotion, but I think when you do that you are setting yourself up for a low. This is a veteran team, and they have been in a lot of playoff series the last few years. It's not important for them to get too high or too low right now. |
You never feel like you're in good shape. These are all winnable games, but they're all games you have to go out and play. No one's going to give you the game. |
You never want to have a player that has so much confidence against you that he thinks he can just take the game over at any time. At least he's not going to think he can walk on the floor and score 17 straight on us. |
You saw both teams as basically who they are - both meat-and-potato teams. |
You saw both teams as basically who they are - meat-and-potato teams. Maybe this is why the game wasn't hyped as much. This is what basketball was meant to be like - play defense, play team basketball. |
You saw both teams as basically who they are -- meat-and-potato teams. Maybe this is why the game wasn't hyped as much. This is what basketball was meant to be like -- play defense, play team basketball. |