Doc Rivers Guys Quotations

As a coach, you've got to do what's best for the team. If guys don't like it, they're going to leave. If they stay and don't like it, well, your team's going to suck anyway. Even if this happens, you still have to do it. You can't coach worrying about any individual.

No, our guys know about Miami. Of all the things that can beat us (tonight), that shouldn't be one of them.

I don't think our young guys gave us anything.

I think they belong under the dangerous category. I just look at the three guys ? Vince Carter Jason Kidd, and (Richard) Jefferson. There's no better combination in the league at 1, 2 and 3. When you have that in the league you can win big.

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.

I thought some guys gave good effort tonight, but some have their luggage in mind on the plane already. Turnovers and shot selection killed us.

The defensive (side) was phenomenal by both teams. It was a game played in mud. I just told the guys I thought they fought for the most part. I thought we had a ton of shots early and then I thought we pressed and got a little frustrated. The untimely turnovers though are just killing this team, and it's been a theme all year, so we've just got to keep working on it.

You heard their voices. Our young guys were extremely verbal. It's the first time we heard their voices.

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

The rich get richer. It's always the wealthy guys that win those games.

Tonight was good because it was against a team that had to win. When we got down, we could have gone the other way. It was a conscious choice by our guys to stay in the game. I was really proud of them.

As a staff, you get to see how your guys handle playoff basketball, and I think it's easier to evaluate in playoff games what you need for the following year than it is in the 82-game regular season.

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.

Oh, these guys won't be gentle about that. You know that much on this team.

It's tougher obviously after a loss because guys are down emotionally. On days after a loss sometimes you've really got to snap their focus in. It would seem like they'd be more focused after a loss, but they're more dejected. Their confidence is down. You spend have the time trying to work them into it. Today we didn't have to do that.

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.

It's been the story of our season that we're close enough but we just can't close games out. I told the guys they are playing hard and they just have to live with it.

The funniest part is I missed most of the celebration because I ran into the locker room because I thought that's what everyone did, ... I probably sat in there for five minutes and not one player came in there. I came back out and Michael Wilson's on the rim, guys are celebrating. I guess I should have stayed out there, but I didn't know.

We're going to win the division, ... If we don't, we've taken a step backward unless our young guys have done something where you can see hope. But I'm going to tell you this, and hopefully it won't be often: That young team stuff is not going to be used as a crutch. OK, we're young. So what?

We just kept scratching. I told our guys at halftime that I thought our first half was as soft defensively as we'd been all year. And we started our third quarter out the same way. They got three or four open shots and I had to burn two timeouts but then I thought our bench, even though they were outscored in a big way, was the reason we won the game.