For all our guys, it's a great thing to get in for the first time, to be experiencing it and playing and having a chance to experience what the second season is all about. |
For the organization, it's a tremendous accomplishment. It's been a long time since this has happened. But for me, it's the vision I had. My philosophy through it all is you have to defend to be good. |
Four hours might seem like a lot. But for me, that's a lot better than working 9 to 5. |
From a defensive standpoint, we wanted to set the tempo of the game. I thought we did a pretty good job trying to establish out low post game. |
From our standpoint, it was a great season. We accomplished the goals we set out to accomplish; making the playoffs and getting home court. |
From where I was sitting, I thought it was good. Wouldn't that have been a capper to all that happened tonight. |
Give Denver a lot of credit. Denver played a great ball game and just beat us. We had 24 turnovers and had a chance to survive and that's amazing to me. |
Guys definitely were strong. We came. We blocked. We attacked. |
He can drift, and sometimes he doesn't exactly understand what you're saying. This guy is visual. If you show him, he can do it. If you verbalize, hit or miss. |
He did a great job being physical, creating his own space and being relentless, as far as going after loose balls. He was around the basket, he was huge and just claimed everything. And we needed all 23 of those boards. |
He got back in rhythm and that's good for us. You saw how explosive he is. A guy being able to come in and put points on the board like that is very important to us. |
He got points but he had to really work for those points. Our defense really showed up. Our offense really dictated what we did on defense and our defense was really solid. |
He's (Richardson) hit a lot of big shots for us through the years. He thrives in those situations so I wouldn't say we expect him to make those shots, but we're not surprised when he makes them. |
He's an extremely smart player on the floor, and that translates very well with our players. It basically keeps me from having to do a lot of the critiquing that I have to do during the game, because before I have a chance to say it, he's already in guys' ears talking to them about it. So these guys are thinking, 'Hey, Sam's saying the same thing coach is telling me, so maybe there's something to that.' So it's a real positive. |
He's been unbelievable for us. He's always near-perfect, always in the right place at the right time. |