Avery Johnson Playing Quotations

My guys are pretty smart. They know exactly where they are. I kind of like that we have something to play for, playing against playoff teams.

When he's on his game and he's playing tough, hard-nosed defense and getting rebounds, getting some assists, guarding one of the better perimeter players and scoring, I'm a much better coach.

We thought we had a legitimate beef with the way they were playing Dirk. When you don't complain, sometimes it can give the message that you don't care.

He just still doesn't know all the ins and outs of the game. He started playing basketball so late in life that he's still catching up.

I sure hope we're different. We seem to have been playing more physical basketball on the defensive end. Again, that was just one of those special games, the guy got on fire and obviously, since that's happened, we're not the team he's scored the most points against.

Our team is not playing enough of a 48-minute game and that's the disappointing thing. We know it's tough to win road games. This was a hot team team we were playing, give them credit. But you can't play 18-20 minutes of a second half and expect to beat any NBA team.

I thought this was our best performance of the series. We talked about playing tough, hard-nosed defense tonight to try and close this series out.

I wasn't trying to rally the team by getting ejected. I think it was more just a difference of opinion. We were dealing with things the whole game, and we thought that we had a legitimate beef with the way they were playing Dirk. I guess we were wrong.

Three games in four days, playing teams below .500, above .500, it really doesn't matter at this point. Everybody's got schedule stuff. The schedule is not a problem. We haven't played well since the All-Star break, all right? We have not played well since the All-Star break.

Yao is playing some awfully good basketball. I had a firsthand look at him during All-Star Weekend, and he looked to be moving pretty good. Obviously he's a big focus of our defense.

We obviously have been playing some pretty good basketball. We knew we were on a streak. In my mind you don't think it's ever going to come to an end. When it does it just doesn't feel good.

We're not playing any defense. They shot 55 percent from the field and score 56 points in the first half. You're not going to win many games in this league playing like that. We've definitely taken a step back in that area.

We want our main guys to start playing now. You'll see some different looks.

Dirk is playing tough. We had a stretch there where we kind of reverted back to our old selves and got jump-shot happy for six or seven possessions and I really got on them about that. But I will take this win any way we can get it.

Everybody is asking me if I'm going to play Elton Brand 48 minutes because we play (the Clippers) Tuesday. No, none of that. Just spread out the playing time.

The road wasn't too friendly to us the last time. I'm already getting a bad memory. Hopefully, we'll have a better response on the road overall than the last game and give ourselves a chance to win by playing our system. But we've gone back to some basics that seem to have helped us.

Ron has impacted them. He wants to show he's a dominant player on both ends of the floor. He's playing as good on that left block as I've seen him throughout his career.

I love it. I wish we could play the last 20 games like this because I really want to try to go into the playoffs playing at a high level. But you can't play at a high level when you're playing against teams that don't really have anything to play for.

They were playing loose and had nothing to lose.

It was a gutsy win for us tonight. That's a scrappy team over there. They've been playing some very good basketball and we don't take anything for granted. (Stackhouse) stepped up tonight and I thought Devin really came on and gave us a big lift in overtime.

It's a big improvement from last year, ... He's really trying defensively. And the kid is healthy. Last year he was playing on one ankle.

We knew it was going to be a dogfight coming in here, playing against a well-coached team. That's the sign of a good team. ... We were kind of on our heels, but we kept battling. It was a gutsy performance by our team.

It means a lot. Those are two guys who obviously can be starting. Damp's been a starter and Stack's been a starter, so hopefully, we can get those guys matched up on some of the other team's second-team players. We like to go to Damp, and we went to him tonight - and he delivered. He's been playing really hard.