'O' just made his shots. As I told him the other day, we certainly haven't lost confidence in him or anything. I wanted to make sure that he hadn't lost confidence in himself. He assured me that he hadn't. |
(Brand) is clearly one of the top 10 players in the league, maybe the top five. I read early on that he said he is in much better shape this year and that has helped. He has shot the ball well from the perimeter. He is just having a fantastic season. |
(Friday) We could tell right from the beginning, we weren't all there. Tonight, we could tell we were all there. We got really active. We put pressure on them. We were really in tune with our game plan. |
[Bulls center Eddy Curry looks fitter than ever, and it's not just because he's sporting a new mini 'fro hairstyle. The 6-foot-11 man-child worked out most of the summer with personal trainer Tim Grover and showed up for camp at his listed 285, some 20 pounds lighter than he finished last season.] He's in the best shape of his pro career, ... We're excited about it. Hopefully he can settle in now and work on his game and have a great year. |
[By] this time next week, we're either going to feel much better about it or probably much worse. It depends on these next few games. |
[Gordon] knows what he has to do. He's got to get back into the game during those periods, and he's got to score for us. |
[O'Neal] is in charge of that. We are not in charge of that. When [O'Neal] wants to get things done, he will. He got in some foul trouble, he had an off-night. He doesn't have many of those. |
[We've] had a lot of games go against us like that where we haven't been able to seize the moment, and our guys seem to be growing up as a team, and it's nice to see. |
A little bit over 4 percent. But knowing the guys like I know 'em, it would be shocking to me if they didn't believe in themselves. |
A lot can turn on this game tonight. |
A.D.'s leadership presence is definitely something we've missed. There's no doubt about that. And Griff was very important to our team. We miss that (veteran leadership). |
After it got to seven points our guys just hung in there. Our guys were fatigued after last night's game, so I'm really proud of how they all battled. |
All you need to do is watch a couple NBA games to know that's an automatic timeout. We have guys with enough experience to know that. It's inexcusable. |
Antonio Davis can't help but be a good influence on the other guys and Jerome Williams hustles all the time. He gets up and down the floor. |
Anybody that's involved in the league in depth and watches us play knows that we have more things in our offense for Ben probably than any other team in the league has for any other player. It's normally the guys who aren't playing well that are making those kinds of comments. So I don't put much stock in that. |