Brendan Haywood Quotations

We have regressed. You can't really argue with that. Our team defense is Swiss cheese right now. Any time you are giving up the points we've given up over the last seven games, you can't say anything but negative things about our defense. I can't think of anything positive.

One play doesn't win a ball game. Some guys said it helped us out a lot. I'm not sure. It was just one play. It was something I felt needed to be done. I thought the team as a whole, we all knew we had to be better and bring a more physical presence.

Right now it's not about me, it's about the team.

I don't know why I'm not starting. I'm not going to sit here and lie to you, I'm not really happy about it. But if (Jordan) feels it helps the team, so be it.

I feel real good, ... My body fat is down. My weight is in a good area. I'm not sure if it's the best shape of my career, but I'll take it. I feel good about where I am.

I don't think anyone has quit. But if you haven't noticed, this isn't the team that we had last year. And because of that we are trying to find our way. You can't just take away important pieces and try to get around that and we haven't recovered from the losses we had last season.

He tried to go through me with the elbow and I was there to take the charge and the referee gave me a favorable call. I might have got in his head a little bit, but I don't know what he was thinking about going after the referee. That seemed a little foolish, but at the end of the day I was just out there competing. I wasn't really trying to get in his head.

We're not worried about who we're going to play; we just want to go ahead and finish on a positive. If you get past the first round, you're going to have to play them anyway.

Last night I said I'll be ready to help this team anyway I possibly can. But I'm not happy about the situation. I'm not going back on that statement. That's what I said, and that's it.

I think we relieved but not satisfied. We know that just because we are in doesn't mean that we can go out and tank these last two games. We want to finish fifth. We want to finish strong and go into the playoffs on a good note.

Just because we made the playoffs doesn't mean the season is over. We have to come out strong and play well against Milwaukee.

I saw him miss a lot of easy shots.

Right now, starting or not starting, it's the playoffs. It's about winning. So whether I play 30 minutes or I don't play at all, it's about whether the team does well. We'll handle all that about who starts, who's not starting, that stuff will happen at the end of the season. We'll talk about that this summer.

I think if he could look into a crystal ball and see the future, he'd probably realize he made a big mistake, because he could've made a name for himself and changed the way this whole league views him, just off this series alone. He has a great 15-foot jump shot and he's highly skilled. This could have been the series that changed his game around because, like it or not, he was going to play.

I might have got in his head a little bit.

I wasn't late. I didn't cuss anybody out. It was just a coach's decision. It was just something that had to be done. If he's not saying anything about it, I'm not saying anything about it because it wasn't a negative thing.

We can't give up 38 points in a quarter to the Hawks. That's just bad defense.

We want to finish fifth and finish the season on a positive note. We can be competitive against anyone we face (in the playoffs). We're competitive with anybody.

As talented as Gilbert is he is going to feel like he has to do it by himself, and we have to ease that pressure off of him. And you don't want us to become that type of basketball team.

Right now, we're just in the middle of trying to find ourselves, that's where we are. We're not a bad team but we're not an elite team either. We're in the middle with a lot of other teams. We have to work hard to make ourselves a great team and, right now, we have a lot of hard work to do.

Right now, we're disjointed. We're not a team. I think everybody likes each other, everybody's out there playing hard, but we're not always playing hard and smart.

The most important thing about camp and the preseason will be getting some chemistry going with the new guys. Last year, we knew where everyone was going to be on a certain play, how they were going to react to a certain defense or where they wanted a pass. It's going to take some time before we have that again.

That's why we have to go out and win the next two games against Milwaukee and Detroit. These are must-win games for us.

The big three gets all the headlines; the little two does all the little things it takes to win.

It's disappointing right now, ... but we did things that hadn't been done since the '80s. The Wizards were pretty much dead, and we brought in some life.

I look at it like I have a long ways to go to catch the top guys, ... I want to stay hungry. I don't ever want to think that I reached or accomplished anything because I still have a long ways to go. There's the elite centers and then there's a second group. I'm in there right now so I have to keep working and climb my way to the top.

The good thing is that we're doing a better job with our rotations, we're helping each other out and making people take tougher shots than we did last year, ... Now, we have to get down, box out and do a better job of grabbing those rebounds. That's how you can really take a team out of the game.