Sam Mitchell Quotations

We're just making mental mistakes that we're not good enough to recover from,

Mike James is a positive player, ... He's got playoff experience, he's played for some good coaches and we're looking forward to bringing him in.

Right now, everyone's going to predict different teams and they should. San Antonio, Miami, those teams on paper have guys stronger. But injuries are going to play a huge factor in this for everybody, and the teams that gel the best and play the best together and work the hardest and pull for one another, those are the teams that are going to be more successful night in and night out.

I guess I'm getting my test on patience. I'm going to be patient, but it's tough.

I can't fault the effort, but we made some mistakes. But they were mistakes because they were all trying to make a play.

We can live with inexperience, guys making mistakes because of inexperience. I'm not disappointed in the effort of our guys.

When I put him in the lineup as a small forward, I told him it was on a game-to-game basis. He assured me he wasn't going to relinquish the position.

Just handling certain situations different, being more patient,

Our practices have been great, ... But mentally we have to be able to focus and carry it over at 7 o'clock on game nights.

Our young guys are playing hard and competing and we just got to get some other people to jump on board.

We're all hopeful that he can play and recover from this - for Alvin. He's worked hard, and he's a good basketball player and brings the type of attitude that you want to your team. I just this is one step in his comeback.

You learn. If you're not capable of learning year to year, you don't last long.

We're not the only 0-3 team in the NBA,

But no one feels sorry for us, and we can't feel sorry for ourselves. We just have to remember these beatings and give them back some day.

You ask me how many game we're going to win, I'll tell you at the end of the season. I'll tell you in April.

You have to keep giving them minutes. The more minutes they get, the more comfortable they're going to be. These guys all have talent; we just have to continue to work.

We just want to go out and just play hard and play with some confidence and make some shots, and that's been a lot of our problem,

We just got beat. It's not going to get any easier, either.

Do we want to win? Of course, every time we step on the floor and play,

Probably 80 per cent of it (is due to youth and inexperience). They come out with veteran guys who understand the league and know how to play. We come out with second-year guys, it's tough.

Probably our inexperience down the stretch cost us.

It's nice. And it's even nicer that some of the free agents we have came in and had a chance to play and played well. I was happy for those guys,

Every week we're going to get better. Obviously our young guys need time to grow and learn how to play at this level. The most difficult thing is going to be to have patience.

I'm going to try to empower my guys to help teach, to help motivate, to help encourage them, to help these guys when they have a bad stretch to keep their confidence up.

I think our guys are just overwhelmed, this is a brutal way to be introduced to the NBA,

I just know how to deal with the players different now. You've got to learn as a coach, and especially first year with new players, which buttons to push, and how to push them, and when to push them.

If I go that route, and I haven't decided, it won't be that I'm angry, it will be that we've got to grab some people's attention,

The guys want to win, this is what we do and I hope people understand that. As bad as they want us to win, trust me, there's not one fan that comes to the game that wants to win more than myself and these players.