Flip Saunders Team Quotations

I think people will understand that when we go in together, they will understand what it really is all about. A few years ago ... there were rule changes that were made to make the game aesthetically better and to make the game more team oriented, not as individually oriented. I think the reward that the coaches gave our players kind of signified a little bit maybe that's the way our league is going.

I think if I didn't enjoy this team so much and wasn't having so much fun, things could become really difficult with being away from my family. But everything is fine. I love coming to work every day.

Every team has a chance to win, whether you are playing Detroit, Miami, New Jersey or whoever. There are no bargains in this thing where somebody is just going to walk through the first round. That's just how this league operates.

They're both very deserving because you look at where their team is at and what their team is doing and how important they are to their teams. But you know what? Our players, we're not driven by that. We're driven by rings, and so those type of things, that's not even up for discussion.

They're a different team with Tracy. He was phenomenal tonight.

They're a different team. Before, they could really spot up and shoot it extremely well and could really spread the floor. Now they're a much more athletic team and try to use their athleticism both on the offensive end and defensive end. They're going through those adjustments right now.

Usually, whatever team is aggressive is going to have success. I thought they were more aggressive. Our strength is our ability to play hard and be aggressive, and when a team does that better than you do, you're going to struggle.

We've played 37 games and different guys lead us over different parts of the game and play unselfish...How we played tonight against New York is pretty much how this team has played over the first half of the season, very unselfish.

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.

Things might shake out a little more in the next few days. Teams might have been hanging on to people to see if they could make a trade. Now they might let them go. You see a lot of guys go on waivers after the trade deadline. I'd say by Tuesday you'll know more about around the league from a roster standpoint.

That's a decision that every day as a team they have to make. Fortunately for us, those two guys are pretty good decision makers, and depending on what they give us, is what we'll usually take.

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.

I thought, 'You're coming to a team that just won a championship and was five minutes away from winning another,' so your question is how receptive will they be to what you want to do,

I think the one thing that people underestimate is that when there's adversity and they become challenged they rise up to the occasion. They love those types of situations. That's why this team is built for the playoffs.

They all bring something to the table. Bryan got the players there. Mike put the players in a situation to be successful. Nash implemented the situation to be successful. They all bring something, and that's what team is all about.

He's making progress. What will help him is that after Orlando (tonight) we have two days of practice. He will be able to have two hard team practices, and we can evaluate him after that.

It was intense. The players love to compete. The Spurs love to compete against big teams just like us. It was a good game to watch.

It's almost like a classroom. A lot of teams are very temperamental. We have a sense of calm.

I look at their team, and we are mirror images from the standpoint of we both have some exciting players, but because both teams are so unselfish and there's not a lot of controversy, they don't get a lot of individual notoriety. Bottom line is, both teams are about winning, and about doing whatever it takes to win.

We seemed to lose our energy. They were more aggressive and the team that's more aggressive is going to get the loose balls, get the calls and have things fall their way.

We've been known in the league that we played the best zone defense, when I was in Minnesota, ... In one day, I can tell you that we're going to be a much better zone defensive team than we were in Minnesota.

You're in a situation where the other team doesn't have anything to lose. Their backs are against the wall, and they're going to come out and play with a great amount of energy. They're going to play with confidence from the way they've played their last couple games. You know going in about that situation, so you know you have to go in and have a superior performance. You can't just come out and have an average performance.

The biggest thing is going to be now he's on a team that's a championship-type team. It's just that mind-set. But I think that's the reason he came here, because that's what he wanted to get into.

This doesn't change anything (in the East). Look at the Minnesota Vikings. Controversy sometimes can bring a team closer together.

We've faced a lot of teams that have had that sense of urgency, so what has happened, teams have kind of jumped on us early. We've had to fight our butts off to get back in games.

I thought our full-court trap changed the tempo of the game out of free throw situations. And I thought we played some zone the first half that helped us a little bit. I think both teams tried some things to see what worked and to use down the road.

I think what's happened is (starters) minutes have gone down in the last few games because of the play of (Antonio) McDyess, the play of Mo (Evans), the play of (Carlos) Delfino, the play of (Carlos) Arroyo. Those guys have played well, and if a team plays well, you keep them on the floor.

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.

To get 30 assists as a team after the way we started out - we started playing the way we were capable of playing offensively.

We're going through this stretch where every team has a superstar that can carry a team. The consistent thing is that, at some point in the game, we turn it on at an unbelievably high level.

The character that we have as a team is directly reflected because of him. The reason he was a Hall of Fame player was because of that character.

I don't judge somebody that's had five years of stellar work -- not only with the team but in the community, and how he has been in practice -- and judge him by one incident. You judge him on the long haul.

These are the dog days, because the season seems like it's never going to end. You have to take every game one game at a time. When you're on a big run and winning games, that's the biggest challenge you have -- can you withstand the pressure night in and night out of what teams throw at you?

The satisfying thing is, right now we've put basically 16 games in the loss column between us and the next closest team in our division. When you can do that with 26 games to go, you're in pretty good shape.

The satisfying thing about this game is it puts us 16 games up over our next closest team in the division with 26 to go. That's pretty good.

We have a team that plays on the edge. You have to have that. All the great teams in this league have been like that.

The way this team is built, our bench guys are meant to play together in clusters with our main group. When you put all five guys on the floor, they're not as effective as when three of those guys play with a couple of starters.

We had 30 assists, and that shows you are playing team basketball. We share the ball.

You saw both teams as basically who they are -- meat-and-potato teams. Maybe this is why the game wasn't hyped as much. This is what basketball was meant to be like -- play defense, play team basketball.

You saw both teams as basically who they are - both meat-and-potato teams.

I would hope there would be at least three, maybe more. As coaches, we talk about team play, how important it is. This is an opportunity from a league standpoint to show to people - whether it's college kids or high school kids or AAU kids - how important team play really is. It's a very rare opportunity you'd have as a league to maybe put five guys from one team in.

Teams are waiting for us to get things turned up. When that happens, that's when we go on our little runs.

If you took a team from the West and made it play in the East on a nightly basis, they would find out how tough it is. It's such a grind. The East is tougher mentally. It's a grind night in and night out. . . . Trust me. The East is not as bad as they make it out to be.

Part of it is teams that were not very good have gotten better, which makes for a much more competitive conference. What developed for a few years in the Western Conference has now come back to the East, where there aren't really any gimme games.

Our main guys played really well in the third quarter. Then we gave our young guys some fourth quarter experience against a team trying to get a win after losing 10 straight. It would have been better if they would have got the win but overall they did some good things and got some good experience in a close game.

I've been here for five months, and this team still amazes me with its poise.

I've been in situations where I've taken bad teams and moved them in the right direction. In those situations, there is no pressure. Would it have been easy for me to take another job and not have as much (pressure)? Pressure is what you put on yourself. I don't really feel any pressure walking into a situation.

Rip did a great job and Redd didn't have a lot of breathing room. One of the reasons we aren't a big fouling team is that we don't produce a lot of steals. We don't jump out and we don't gamble. We play position defense. That's why so often our man-to-man looks like a zone. We try to make teams beat us over the top and contest every shot.

You've got a team that had three days off playing against a team that played four games in five days, in four different cities, and a back-to-back situation. They played with a great amount of energy and they carried that energy to a win.

Our guys have to be stimulated mentally. I've always said this team gets bored at times. When you're forced to react, forced to move, you don't really have a chance to maybe think about getting bored. You just go out and your instincts take over.

I haven't thought over the last week we've been very sharp. We've let teams hang around. That's why I've said, whether guys are tired or whatever, we're not playing with the zip and the sense of urgency.

I want to win. My thing was not what this team has done in the past, it's what we have an opportunity to do in the future. So, my decision came pretty easy.

Coming in from the outside, you could see that this team was hurt from what happened last year in Game 7. Sometimes you think over the course of time, they say that time heals wounds. But time just didn't seem to heal that wound.

He's playing pretty good. He's been playing with the main guys and I think he's a lot stronger and obviously, playing on his national team (Serbia-Montenegro) this summer, he's in great condition.

He's playing and getting in shape and he makes a difference in games. Guys on opposing teams typically don't want Lindsey to guard them.

Bottom line, we are a multi-dimensional team that can play different ways. We can play inside, we can play deep perimeter and we can play mid-range. We can do different things and that's what makes our offense so effective.

I was disappointed in the defense, and I told them that at halftime. These are the dog days, when it seems like the season is never going to end, and it takes a while to get your energy levels up. And when you have a gaudy record like we do, every team is going to come out hard against you.

We also are in the entertainment business. I've always been one to go out and win games but also entertain, and I think we've become a team now that a lot of people like to watch play, because we play extremely aggressive at both ends of the floor.

It was a good learning experience for those young guys to play a team that was basically in a must-win situation.

When you get 30 assists, it shows you are playing team basketball, ... This league is about finding where the mismatches are and exploit the weaknesses.

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.

The thing is -- like it or not -- a lot of teams don't prepare much to play against zones, ... They don't have as expansive an offense as they do for man-to-man.

From what I read and hear, as a team and with Shaq, they feel like they are going to be able to turn it on when they need to. Veteran players have that belief. We go through that here in some games But I expect them to come with a great deal of energy.

Kind of how we've been for 37 games. Different guys lead us over different parts of the game, play unselfish. Thirty assists, eight turnovers, that's kind of where we've been when we win games. I think how we played tonight against New York is pretty much how this team has played through the first half of this season.

The first time I talked about that, we went out and turned it over the first four times we touched the ball. That mark I credit to players who are extremely disciplined and players who know their roles. They don't play out of character and that goes back to what I've talked about all year -- this team has a very high basketball intelligence.

Any time you take a job where a team won the championship and got within five minutes of winning another, you wonder, how are they going to accept you? But they've been very open to coaching, very open to doing whatever we've asked.

This was a game I wish I could have been in the stands, just sitting there watching. This was a great basketball game between two teams who played hard and with a lot of emotion. It was a very entertaining game.

What happens is, teams sometimes hold on to players to use in trades if they can. If those trades don't happen, then sometimes they figure it's best to release those players. Every team will know more of where their roster stands by next Tuesday.

The one reason we have been in the games prior to this was because of our defense. We had four (actually three) straight games of holding teams in the 70s. That's pretty tough to do in this league.

One of the strengths of this team is we grind it defensively but we get fast break points. We have the opportunity to get points in the open floor.

(With) a young team, what happens is, it's like they're waiting for us to make a run. When a team makes a run, you have to really jump in there.

We've talked about Chauncey and how it would be a travesty if he's not an All-Star. It's the same way with Parker. He's really played at that level the last couple of years, and I can't see any way he doesn't make that All-Star team this year.

Ben was phenomenal. People talk about Bruce Bowen and others as the best defender. Bruce is a great individual defender. Ben is a great individual defender. But Ben Wallace might be one of the best that's played the game as a team defender.

When you take a team like Milwaukee that can really score and you hold them to 74 points your team defense is doing something. That's the staple of our team.

We executed pretty much, ... You have to be aggressive. If a team takes something away, you have to have enough freedom to go in and attack. And they didn't do that, but you can see in the second half they started to execute better and get some open looks.

To have 36 assists on 43 baskets shows that we are playing team basketball. We aren't as good as we looked tonight, and we aren't as bad as we looked in Dallas.

The thing is, we're not going to change. You have to understand something: This team has a lot of playoff experience. They've been to the Finals the last two years. They're not playing differently than what they've played. That's how they play.

It's been pretty much a mirror from the standpoint of both teams have established their ability to win at home, they got great crowds at both places as far as the enthusiasm, and both our teams have been the best teams on the road. It's different sports, but we're both looking each other in the mirror.

This is going to be a great game for the fans. It's going to be a competitive game. But I don't know how much bearing it will have for either team down the road. I mean, if we go out and dominate them, I don't know what bearing that would have come playoff time, and same thing the other way.

They came out extremely aggressive and we, for the second game in a row, didn't come out sharp. I've always said that whichever team is most aggressive usually has success.

The dog days are always the 10 days prior to All-Star break. That's always a tough time. You see a lot of teams get upset because guys say, 'OK, I've got a week off, I'm going somewhere for All-Star break.' Multiply that on top of our situation of guys wondering, 'Well, am I going to be an All-Star or not?' There's always that anxiety of wondering.

We didn't have our heads in the game in the first half. But this team never ceases to amaze me. They were challenged and they stepped up.

Everyone has their own reasons why they do things. All I know is this is my team right now, and the guys have bought into what we're trying to do. The playoffs are what drive everybody in this league, and we're looking forward to what's going to happen.

They made the plays, we didn't. I haven't thought over the last week that we've been very sharp. We've let teams hang around.

They made plays. We didn't. As I told our guys, I haven't thought over the last week that we've been very sharp. We've let teams hang around. Guys are tired or whatever, but we're not playing with that zip, with that sense of urgency.

They don't quit. They keep on coming at you. There were times we had them down, they could have (given up), but they came right back. That's why they've been able to beat some good teams lately.

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,

I thought we made great adjustments in the second half. You can talk about turning it up, but I think the big thing is that our team has the ability to see how a team plays, then make the adjustments to get into their weaknesses. You can turn up your energy, but you still have to be able to beat the other team.