Flip Saunders Hot Quotations

The scary thing is he's only 21. Watching him when he was younger, I always thought one of his main strengths was the ability to make other people better. That can always be your major weakness if you do that too much. What he's done in the last month is on the fine line of when he needs to take over a game and when he needs to take a shot to win a game.

He starts to get hesitant. He'll turn down shots the first time and then all of the sudden, he ends up taking a shot that's a worse shot than he had the first time. Or a contested shot. So with him, I talk to him about staying aggressive offensively.

To this point, we've shot it pretty well. I don't want guys thinking about whether they should shoot it or not. If they do that, they're probably going to miss it anyway.

We've been doing a lot of shooting, and I think that's starting to pay off. Guys are starting to understand. Most of the shooting we do are in places where we plan to get shots in our offense, so the more you do that, the more you take those shots, the more comfortable they get, and I think that's what's happened.

We weren't aggressive. We were taking half-(hearted) cuts, so when you take slow cuts, you're not going to lose anybody. All the shots were contested shots.

We took, I thought, too many quick shots. We took 50 shots with one pass or less out of 75 shots, which for us is way too many. And that's one of the reasons we only had 17 assists. Even though we won by 18, they made a couple of runs at us, and I think we have a big area of improvement to get more people involved offensively and move the ball a little bit more.

He's gotten really aggressive and he's making big shots. Watching them play a lot, he gets a lot of shots in the last five seconds of games. He will put pressure on your defense because he can shoot the three, but he's also improved his game getting to the basket.

They might as well take the Defensive Player of the Year trophy and send it. When you look at all the things he's doing as far as rebounding, blocking shots and steals, he's been phenomenal.

They might as well take the defensive player of the year award and send it to Ben. He's been on a mission in the last three weeks, and when you look at all of the things he's doing - rebounding, blocking shots and making steals - he's phenomenal.

They got a run, we got undisciplined. We were looking for the home-run shot instead of doing the best thing that we do, and that's execute offensively. We were playing 45 feet from the basket with no dribbles.

He's a different presence. There's no question that without him, they didn't go inside as much. He gives them a low-block presence. He's more of a go-to guy as far as inside down the stretch. Defensively, he's a shot blocker. It just gives them more bodies up front.

He made some shots early. Maybe got carried away a little bit in the second half. You can see that he's getting into better shape. He's lively. And he's one of those guys when he's guarding somebody, they don't want him on them.

Were not going to keep Michael at 11 or 14 points. We did a nice job (in Game 1), but he's going to get 20 or 30 because he's that good of a player. What we've got to do is make him earn those and make him be a volume scorer. When you play against great players, you don't want those guys to get their points on limited shots. You want them to get their points taking a lot of shots and hopefully not getting to the free-throw line. That has to be our main focus.

There are no unknowns at this point. But from their standpoint, the X-factor is that they are a team that takes as many three-pointers as anybody. If they get hot like they can, they can cause you a lot of problems. But, one of our strengths all year was defending the three. Hope that continues.

If you give Rip (Hamilton) shots and he's in rhythm, he'll often make those shots.

When you play great ones, it's the team assignment. You have to make him a volume scorer. You can't let him get 30 points on 18 shots. What you want to is keep him out of the free-throw line, make him take a lot of shots if you can.

What I didn't understand was how good he can be defensively, blocking shots and he has a pretty good presence of understanding what he's supposed to do in the team concept defensively,

When we're taking shots from the corners and we did a lot tonight, that shows we are playing a lot of ball movement, a lot of player movement and making the extra pass. That's pretty much how you'd want to play offensively.

We have to know that they have other guys that are capable. Charlie Bell has played well. T.J. Ford had a pretty good game overall and we've got to continue to find those two. Just do what we normally do. Our philosophy is to contest whatever shot is taken, try to limit three-point shots and rebound the basketball. Those are three things we did.

He can get a jump shot whenever he wants, he can get to the basket almost whenever he wants, and he just does things so easy.

It seems like every team comes out and plays their best game against (us). As a team, it's like taking body shots every game.

I thought he missed some shots, but he made plays. Sometimes I look at a player's ability to get good shots and he got good shots. I thought he also did a nice job on Ray Allen .

They pounded us on the glass. Give them credit. They made shots and played with more energy. We were a little bit tired.

He was incredible. We had a hand in his face all night, and he goes 5-for-5 on threes in the first half. Some of those shots were unbelievable.

They still shot extremely well today, but we were more aggressive defensively and forced more turnovers. It was one of those games where they either turned it over or scored almost every time.

The reason in the playoffs that defensive-oriented teams are successful is because the longer you play someone, you become more comfortable with how guys are getting their shots and what they're doing. You have the ability to lock down more from a defensive standpoint.