DeShawn Stevenson Quotations

We've got next year to look forward to. We've got a good ball club, and we've seen the whole demeanor of things change.

There are a lot of games left. With the NBA, you never know.

Losing at home like this really stinks, but I still believe we can build off this finish come next season. Hopefully next year we'll have this same group of guys together again and we'll play like we have these last few weeks.

No disrespect to Toronto, but you have to win these type of games.

If we go out there and play defense, we can win games.

I don't agree with it, but there is something wrong with that. I'm all for wearing suits, even though I don't wear suits. I think jewelry-wise, that's a decision on how we want to spend our money. I feel like people want that. People like the watches, the chains. Even when I go out, when I don't wear it, people ask me, 'Where's the chain at?' It's going to be pretty tough to get everybody to stop wearing their $30,000, $40,000 -- maybe more than that -- chains. It's a waste of money if we can't wear it where we want to wear it.

I have a tough job every night. You can't truly stop anybody in this league. I just try to get in the other shooting guard's head and make everything tough.

He's a special kid. To go out there and have 28 points and 26 rebounds is special. Now all he has to do is work on his free throws. But with Dwight, the sky's the limit.

We lost these kinds of games last season. If you're looking ahead, you sleep on teams.

Other teams have started to feel like they're at home when they play in Orlando. We've got to start being more physical and let these guys know that this is our place.

Steve Francis wasn't playing like the Steve Francis we all know. I think he'll show the real Steve in New York.

Steve did an awesome job off the bench. He didn't complain about it. When you've got a superstar like that who comes out and plays hard after being suspended, that says a lot for his character.

I thought I played him well. We're just making it tough on ourselves. It shouldn't have come to that.

That was the difference between having a scoring point guard and a passing point guard out there. Steve is a scoring point guard; Carlos is a passing point guard.

We do want to go to the playoffs, no doubt. But we've got to worry about each team that comes in here.

We're way more talented than our record. After the trades we made, you can see that in the long term we're going to be a good team down the line. We've got a lot of young guys who are 23, 24 and even 20 years old, and we're eventually going to be a playoff team even though we're struggling now.

We're not talking about the playoffs. We're talking about each game. We go into every game worried about the team we're playing.

This stops the bleeding. Things were starting to get negative around the locker room, players were getting on each other. But we get a win like this, it relaxes us. Now, we've just got to come out and play and get the next one.

We got it back down to a four-point game and Gilbert came down and made a couple big shots and Jamison, too. We started off slow and dug ourselves a hole, and when we got back, they put the pressure back on and went back up by 10 points. ... In the third we were making shots and they were making shots. It came down to who was going to stop the other first.

You can look at it on film, but I'm not going to speak on it. We played hard. We played real hard.

We got a couple of wins going. We're playing good, passing the ball. If we keep playing like that we'll be on a good roll.

We weren't taking care of the ball. When we don't take care of the ball, we make it hard for ourselves.

We're going through a tough stretch right now, but our heads are still up. We're missing Steve and Grant (Hill), but there are no excuses. We just have to go and play.

You get into a city at 3 or 4 o'clock in the morning off a back-to-back, you don't want to have put all of that stuff on. I just think it's a little too excessive.

Sometimes you've got to switch up the starting lineup to get a spark, just to get a win.

Our confidence level is up. If we keep playing like this, we'll be on a good roll.

So we've got to go out there and play every game like it's a playoff game and play together like we're doing. We're doing a good job.

Once you get one - and when you're told you can't get them growing up - it just makes you want them even more. Once you get one, they're pretty much addictive from that point.

Coach chewed us out because we weren't playing hard and we were lackadaisical in the first half. He fired us up and we finally started attacking the basket.

They're a good team. They've been playing with each other a long time and winning championships. And in the third quarter, you could see it out there.

It was a tough loss. We came out and tried to play hard and gave it up in the fourth quarter. They did a good job of stopping our last couple of plays. It was back and forth, but they ... played all the way through.

It's tough losing Steve. Steve's a good guy.

It's kind of sad because we could have done this at the start of the season. Right now everybody's playing as a team and working hard. We've got some firepower from the people who start and the people coming off the bench.

It's hard to read A.I.. He has a lot of moves and can dribble the ball and shoot the ball from behind the (3-point) arc. But I think we did a good job tonight. He had 36, but we did a good job.

Everybody is happy with each other, everybody is passing the ball, there's a lot of good vibes and it shows on the court.

Everybody is going to the hole, trying to create stuff. Once we get it in Grant or Steve's hands, they pretty much open the floor and Dwight's down there doing what he's supposed to do on the boards. You can't ask for more.

Everybody out there is playing hard and playing like a game. When you do that, sometimes you can get hurt.

Everybody's playing together. When we play together, everybody gets shots -- everybody. And we're knocking them down and feeling comfortable. We've just got to keep playing like we've been playing. It's exciting and fun to watch.

Everybody's happy, we're passing the ball to each other and there are a lot of good vibes right now. It's sad because we could have done this at the beginning of the season.

That's Coach Sloan; he'll tell you what he thinks.

I heard coach ask for a new clipboard. You got to love that. He wants to win badly and so do we.

I don't know if it was the trade, but we were more focused. Everybody went out there and played together as a team.

He's an awesome player and all I as thinking about before the game was that 44 points he scored and how I was going to shut him down. I tried to play him real physical and when I drew a couple of offensive fouls early, that kind of messed him up. Tonight just wasn't his night.

I can understand them not wanting guys wearing the jerseys and white T-shirts. These days you see people wearing nice jeans with a blazer. That's respectful, I think.

You could tell when people came in here, they thought they could walk all over us at home. You have to make it tough on them.

You can't say too much about Grant. He does everything we've got to feed off of him.

You can't say too much about Grant. He does everything. Guards, defends, and gets into the penalty. I think he played awesome tonight and he's our leader. We've got to feed off him.

You can see on the court that everybody's happy with each other. Everybody's passing the ball to each other. There's good vibes.

You've got to go out there and do your job and be professional about it. Any day, you could be gone. Any day, you could be here. So you've just got to make the best of it.