Doc Rivers Great Quotations

I love Courtney Lee. He's a very good player. I know that sounds very simple, but it's true. He does things well. He's a good defender, a great team defender, and he shoots the ball very well.

He's a great scorer every night. It's the other things that he's done for this team that just keeps giving us hope that . . . with the things that we can add, we can be a good basketball team in the near future.

He's given us great hope and he's given us great confidence. I didn't see this out of him this year. I just thought it would take next year before he got his legs under him. Benefit number one is his health.

It came down to the fact that they've been together and they trusted each other. They made a run and they played great defense. You knew they were going to do that.

I thought we won the game because of great ball movement. That's how you play at the end of a game. If they trap you, swing it, and the ball kept moving until it found the open guy. You could see our guys at the end were getting into the ball movement.

You know we're going to make it close. But this was a great win for us. We needed a road win.

You just got to feel at some point, it's going to turn our way. I felt horrible for them. They fought their butts off. I thought other than the middle of the third quarter, when we stopped playing for one stretch, I thought we played just great basketball.

That was such a great game. As a player I couldn't wait to play it.

That was a great win for us, obviously. We couldn't have asked for a better win.

That was a great win for us. We had control of it at times, but you know New Jersey is going to fight back because they are so talented. I thought it was nice that when they did fight back, and took the lead, we kept our composure. We kept fighting, and good things happen when you do that.

We keep talking about the future and obviously you see all the talent, young talent but it's still potential. It's great to have potential but it's better to have it realized.

Wally and Paul played so well off each other. Well, everybody did a great job. The defense, at times, was really good with the rotations, and I just thought the ball moved great.

With Wally going out, everybody had to just pitch in. Everyone did a great job of it.

What really makes me excited is that it (ticks) Gilbert Arenas off because that's what he said the last time. It was a great win for us.

Turnovers killed us. Some guys came with great effort, and some guys had their minds and luggage on the plane.

I wanted him to stay more in the middle of the floor because we thought if he went to the sideline they would be able to double. And they actually did, and he still got the shot off. That was just a great player making a great shot.

Ryan has been great for us and he's just a terror on the backboard. Not only did we need his glass work but we needed his quickness. Without Ryan Gomes, we don't win this game tonight.

Ryan's been great. I still want him to be more aggressive on the post. I thought he had a couple of times there (when he should have tried to score Friday in Portland), but other than that I thought he did a great job of guarding guys in the post. He is quick to react to the ball. There were times I felt he was reacting to the ball before it hit the rim.

We got great shots and didn't make them, but that might have been because of last night (in Miami). Last night was up and down, and tonight was slow. I liked tonight's tempo, because we didn't have the legs to do it again.

I want these guys to be great players, I really do, but I also want them to be professional. I don't know if that comes into my job title or not, but I believe it does. So when that stuff happens, you have to take an action that you don't really want to take.

They are the rare team that has three great players. Most teams have two - except Miami maybe has 2 1/2 with Shaq and Wade.

It's a great lesson for us. We can play with this team. We've proved that. But they've been through so much in the past three years, they can't be shaken. We've been together for one month and things shake us.