Flip Saunders Ability Quotations

Simmons is their second-best scorer, and he's got the ability to post up. If you take your three-man off of him, now all of a sudden, you've got Rip guarding somebody down in the block a lot.

He has the ability to make big shots. He gives us good energy and athleticism.

I think what it does is it shows the character of the team, the whole roster, your ability to go out every night and perform at a high level. To win that many games, you don't take too many days off. Especially the start that we had, it seemed like everyone was playing pretty much their Super Bowl.

I thought he missed some shots, but he made plays. Sometimes I look at a player's ability to get good shots and he got good shots. I thought he also did a nice job on Ray Allen .

I thought we made great adjustments in the second half. You can talk about turning it up, but I think the big thing is that our team has the ability to see how a team plays, then make the adjustments to get into their weaknesses. You can turn up your energy, but you still have to be able to beat the other team.

We have the ability to get by without him, but he's going to want to play. That's how he is. I don't anticipate anything holding him back from playing, and playing a lot of minutes.

Those I take as being comments from a young coach who has never been in that situation. I've never been a coach who downgrades what somebody else is doing to build myself up. I have enough confidence in my own ability to where I feel like I can just go out and show what I can do.

Usually, whatever team is aggressive is going to have success. I thought they were more aggressive. Our strength is our ability to play hard and be aggressive, and when a team does that better than you do, you're going to struggle.

We're not going to lose our personality. Our personality is still our ability to defend and to execute offensively, and we did both today.

Ben did as good a job as you can on Shaq when you play him one-on-one. His defensive presence gave us the ability to shut down some of their other people.

The scary thing is he's only 21. Watching him when he was younger, I always thought one of his main strengths was the ability to make other people better. That can always be your major weakness if you do that too much. What he's done in the last month is on the fine line of when he needs to take over a game and when he needs to take a shot to win a game.

The reason in the playoffs that defensive-oriented teams are successful is because the longer you play someone, you become more comfortable with how guys are getting their shots and what they're doing. You have the ability to lock down more from a defensive standpoint.

Sometimes it's natural to take a step back a bit. It just depends on the flow of the game. But the one thing he does -- and a lot of our other guys do -- when it comes time to clamp down, he has the ability to do that.

It's been pretty much a mirror from the standpoint of both teams have established their ability to win at home, they got great crowds at both places as far as the enthusiasm, and both our teams have been the best teams on the road. It's different sports, but we're both looking each other in the mirror.

In pro sports, you want to win, not only now but down the road. If somebody does something, is it going to affect your ability to win down the road? You make your decisions based on that.

Tony is in a good rhythm. We knew when he was available what he could bring to the team, and we knew he had the ability to score. I don't think everyone knew he could be effective at both perimeter scoring and going to the basket and creating for other people. Right now, he's kind of our instant offense off the bench.