Dwane Casey Guys Quotations

We're missing two of our main horses, and our young guys can keep their heads up by their performance (Friday night), competing against a playoff-hungry team.

He is one of the quickest guys with the ball in the league.

I thought we had a quality, quality game tonight. Guys played to win down the stretch ? except execution and closing out games, on both ends of the floor.

Our positive was Rashad scoring 18 points but on the other end you have guys driving by you going to the basket. I thought though his offensive attack and feel was good.

Our perimeter guys did not contain the ball at all.

I thought it was a clean block at the end. It was a big win, a lot of people counted us for dead. I was glad to see our guys fight back, they met the challenge. Tonight the guys pulled together, responded and executed down the stretch on the fly.

I thought it was great for our confidence in close games, to come out and close the game, and win a game when a team is making a hard run at you like that. We're excited about it. The guys are excited about it.

That was all in fun. I didn't want to mess with the game. But guys were over there joking about him shooting the threes. I didn't mean for him to shoot seven, but like I told him, he was open for a reason.

Most likely, we're going to have a lot of the same guys back, most of the same guys back. That's the reality of it.

Whoever it is in the papers talking about trading for our guy, it's as close to tampering as you can get. But you can't prove anything. I'm sure New York can't control it just like we can't control what you guys may talk about. It's not good when you talk about trading our star player, the face of our franchise.

Those guys fought hard, played hard. To lose like that ...

We wanted to increase the tempo, push the envelope and play as fast as we could. If you are going to be a running team, you have to do it every night. You have to force it. Sometimes the guys think they are running, and they are jogging instead of sprinting.

We have to have more distribution from other guys stepping up.

We had an opportunity to get in the playoff race, and to come back with a goose egg is very disappointing for me. It should be disappointing for the players, and it's disappointing to the staff. When you have young guys like that, we make so many mistakes on both ends of the floor, it's hard to recover from that on the road.

We had an opportunity to extend the lead but didn't come up with making the play. We had open shots, guys were wide open but you've got to be able to make those.

When Kevin went out, the team pulled together. Our young guys did well. It was almost like the youngsters wanting to do well for their big brother.

I see the difference in our team -- the speed, the quickness, the guys in attack mode. I liked our scrap, I liked our fight.

These are young guys and we're trying to win. For me to build a winning environment, you have to try to win every night. These guys were scratching and diving for balls and they deserved to win.

It's a great opportunity for these young guys to do what they did today. To compete, to build, to grow and to fight. Most of all, to win without those guys.

It's very difficult knowing your guys are young players coming in against a veteran team. This shows us what it's like to play against a playoff-ready team.

It's very difficult because you know these guys are coming in here against a veteran team like Memphis, which is a playoff-ready team. They are playoff tough. To come in here for our young guys and compete ... it's a tough task. This gives our young guys a taste of what playoff teams are about.

They did a great job of containing the basketball and getting guys out of their spots.

I just reminded guys that if you do go out to dinner and have a cocktail or drink, don't drive, because you don't know what your legal limit is. Don't even take any chances. Have someone drive for you or call a cab. You have a lot to lose.

He's a one-man wrecking crew. We spent the whole night trying to figure out the offensive sets around where he was on the play. He's a great player. He's one of the guys you have to think about for Defensive Player of the Year.

Garnett was special (tonight). We opened up the lane for him quite a bit where he had the chance to move from block to block. He took advantage of the fact that we spaced the floor. They were sending a couple of guys at him - one in front, one behind, and one on top of him. They had three guys on him at all times, so we had to get creative with the ball.

I asked Justin Reed if anyone had ever run an 'iso' for him in Boston, and he said no. We ran an 'iso' for him and he almost missed the whole goal he was so open. Those things you go through and hope the young guys build on that.

The guys were having fun with it. For what we've been through this season, I thought the guys deserved it. I hope what we did didn't make a mockery of the game.

The guys had lost confidence a little bit. I thought we got it back today.