The big guy [O'Neal] is coming. I could really see him struggling back then, coming off his ankle injury and having to get everything back together. |
The bigger the moment, both of them stepped up even bigger. Sometimes, it's absolutely beyond description. I haven't seen players do that in a long, long time. |
The demise of Shaquille O'Neal has been greatly exaggerated. I can guarantee you that - and I coach him. |
The first three or four minutes, they fronted him and put a guy behind him. Then they started to play him straight up and straight down. Then they started to double-team him, and he not only scored, but he picked their defense apart. |
The guy was absolutely on a torrid pace. We knew that, but we didn't come out and jump on him and shut him down. As a matter of fact, we played him rather passively. |
The only reason there's a rivalry is because the media has created two icons, very young icons. I don't think there's any kind of rivalry yet. Rivalries are born out of hate. And I don't think players today in this league have a dislike for each other anymore. There's just too much backslapping and hugging and all that stuff. |
The points that he scored really weren't ones that hurt us. |
The second half was like night and day from the first. We were so far out of sync at both ends of the court. To be quite frank, when we were down 21-5, we were blessed. |
The team itself was hung over from last night, and very disappointed by it. |
The Ten Commandments were not a suggestion. |
The upside is there could be absolute power dominance inside. But the downside is somebody could say, 'OK, you're going to go big, I'm going to go with five guards -- one shooting center and four guards.' And then who's going to beat who first? |
The voters will put in the best players, and the coaches will take care of the rest. |
The worst thing that can happen is that if you let your mind go for seven days. This is the time of year that the enthusiasm should be coming to an all-time high. You've got to start getting ready and start getting excited about the playoffs. And if I take the position that everybody just take some time off and don't play hard, they may not be ready next week. It's a fine line. |
The worst thing that can happen is that this thing goes to seven games and maybe we'll have him absolutely healthy. But we're planning on trying to go up to Chicago and closing this thing out. |
Their defense was fresh, energized, committed. They knew where we were going to go with the ball and they took it away. |