Doc Rivers Team Quotations

Everybody likes each other until things get tough. Then you will find out what kind of team you have.

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.

Obviously whenever you can improve your team you're going to do that -- with a veteran or a young guy. But we're in games.

He just wasn't responding. He couldn't move out on the floor. He was hurting the team and he was hurting himself. I was worried about the confidence. At the end of the year the one thing I try to protect, especially with our young guys, is going into the (summer) with a positive feeling.

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.

I think Paul's team play enabled us to win on this trip. He's been great. I think people will focus on his scoring, but he's done so many other things. We are continuing to improve. We are becoming a team.

We have a lot of work to do as a team and I can see that. It's exciting because I do see the talent on the floor and I like the fact that this group enjoys playing with each other.

We never had any rhythm. In the second half the defense was much better and we cut into it a little bit. But when you spot a team (19) points, and that team has Kobe, you know eventually during your run that he is going to make a shot.

We played as soft as a team can be. They were tougher mentally, physically and there was no way we were going to win that game.

Do you want to choose winning over standing out? It's a choice every player on every championship team has to do

I just think a guy that knows how to play when you put him on a good team, he can be really good,

I love the NBA playoffs. It's just a great mental test for each team. When it's really close, usually one team pulls together, and the other team comes apart.

This team is one execution away from being a very good basketball team.

You beat a team once, they're going to come after you the next night. We had no answer for anyone in a white jersey.

Tony Dungy is as classy a human being as you will ever know. This is a tough one. I don't know how a team gets through that, to be honest.

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.

Even if we got it up court, we wouldn't have gotten a good shot off. It's a tough loss. The game felt like the last team who had the ball was going to score. Nobody was playing defense on either team.

That team is talented. Right now they don't fit, and they've got other issues obviously.

San Antonio is the best defensive team in the last seven or eight years. They don't normally change things, but they changed their (defensive) coverage three or four times in that game. It didn't work, unfortunately.

It's our job to support him, increase the talent, so he can be on a better team and become a better player. And the better we get, the better he is going to be.

As far away as we are, we are still very close to becoming a good team. When we decided to break this team down last year, letting Antoine (Walker) and Gary (Payton) go, we understood what that would mean. We still hoped to make the playoffs and that's disappointing, but I think this team will be better sooner rather than later.

I told them before the game that I thought the team that went and took it was going to win the game and I thought that was the difference. I thought we got very timid down the stretch, stopped moving the ball, which was very clear. And they made plays.

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 tough loss. The game felt like the team who had the ball last was going to score. Nobody was playing defense on either team. I guess that's what people want to watch. I don't.

We were playing a team that was obviously playing desperate and you could see that play in them. We're loose and we played aggressive.

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?

This was an important win for us. In our standards, this was like a throwback game defensively. So, it was what we needed. I think this team needed this win.