Pat Riley Energy Quotations

I hated to break up the energy level we had going early in the fourth quarter.

What we've noticed a little bit about Chauncey and what Flip has done with this team, he has injected a sense of energy into his team early. Chauncey is no longer just a late-game (shooter). Throughout the course of the game, you've got to be very aware of him, and obviously at the end of the game you've got to deal with him and what's he doing.

He was absolutely great. He did things I haven't seen him do for a couple of years. He's got a lot of energy and he's taking two or three people to the rim. He's picking people apart.

I thought we played some of the best basketball that we've played for two and a half quarters. Then we got really sloppy with turnovers. We lost the energy that we had but we closed it out.

Our guys had tremendous energy to start the game. I hate to say it: Then the game got stopped -- whistle after whistle after whistle.

We didn't play the game with a lot of focused energy in the first half. I thought we were a little slow, we looked tired and (Cleveland) looked sharp and they were good.

We've got a couple of good games with this lineup. But what this lineup has yet to really prove to me is they haven't brought a whole lot of energy at the beginning of the game. I think that's a mental thing more than anything else.

We weren't sharp. They came out with more energy and their offense was much more crisp.

Every time we see this team, and we'll see it again this week, the zone, while it doesn't bother us, it gets us out of sync. We did not play with much energy in the first four of five minutes of the game and then once we started to play with energy and got down the floor quicker things began to open up for us.

Anybody who's got the kind of energy to try to hoist up (nearly) 70 shots is going to score a lot of points. It's remarkable, the execution and the efficiency, but we've got a lot of guys in this league, if they took 70 shots, they'd score a lot of points.

They came out, really wanted to make a statement, jumped on the team defensively. We had a lot of energy to start the game.

They were a step ahead of us because of their effort and their energy and their absolute desperation to make the playoffs. When you get a team with that frame of mind, they are going to be a step ahead of you.

They just kept raising the energy level. I hate to break that up.