Flip Saunders Against Quotations

Kind of how we've been for 37 games. Different guys lead us over different parts of the game, play unselfish. Thirty assists, eight turnovers, that's kind of where we've been when we win games. I think how we played tonight against New York is pretty much how this team has played through the first half of this season.

I was disappointed in the defense, and I told them that at halftime. These are the dog days, when it seems like the season is never going to end, and it takes a while to get your energy levels up. And when you have a gaudy record like we do, every team is going to come out hard against you.

Our main guys played really well in the third quarter. Then we gave our young guys some fourth quarter experience against a team trying to get a win after losing 10 straight. It would have been better if they would have got the win but overall they did some good things and got some good experience in a close game.

I think it means something because in this league confidence means so much. You never want a player to have so much confidence that he feels he can take over a game at any time. The positive thing about this is that he's not going to think he can walk out on the floor and score 17 straight against us.

That was Detroit basketball. The more we played against them, the more we understood their sets and we were able to contest their shots. If we play lock-down defense like we did tonight, we can play with these guys.

That was as good of a job as I have seen against him. I don't think our defense has slipped. We're there.

Those are always more grind-type games than those against the West.

Were not going to keep Michael at 11 or 14 points. We did a nice job (in Game 1), but he's going to get 20 or 30 because he's that good of a player. What we've got to do is make him earn those and make him be a volume scorer. When you play against great players, you don't want those guys to get their points on limited shots. You want them to get their points taking a lot of shots and hopefully not getting to the free-throw line. That has to be our main focus.

We said going in the idea was to not get anybody hurt and make sure that the guys we had to play broke a sweat and didn't get too stale and give our young guys an opportunity to play in a heated situation against some top players.

What they're going to try to do is do what they did during the season, try to get more off open-floor, transition-type opportunities, and try to attack that way and not have to go against our half-court defense as much. That will probably be their biggest adjustment.

We've played 37 games and different guys lead us over different parts of the game and play unselfish...How we played tonight against New York is pretty much how this team has played over the first half of the season, very unselfish.

These are the dog days. The season seems like it will never end at this point. But it seems like no matter who we play, they play pretty good against us.

Tonight, it didn't matter if he had 50, 40, 20 or 10. The idea was for us to win. It wasn't Kobe Bryant against us. It was the Lakers against Detroit.

They're trying to find out who they are. I think everyone who is playing against them is trying to find out who they are a little bit, too.

You never want to have a player that has so much confidence against you that he thinks he can just take the game over at any time. At least he's not going to think he can walk on the floor and score 17 straight on us.

You're in a situation where the other team doesn't have anything to lose. Their backs are against the wall, and they're going to come out and play with a great amount of energy. They're going to play with confidence from the way they've played their last couple games. You know going in about that situation, so you know you have to go in and have a superior performance. You can't just come out and have an average performance.

The thing is -- like it or not -- a lot of teams don't prepare much to play against zones, ... They don't have as expansive an offense as they do for man-to-man.

I told Ben after, I had been in the Western Conference for a lot of years and I have coached against Dirk many times. I don't think I had seen as good a job of playing a guy one-on-one as that. Dirk made some shots, but he really had to work. We wanted to make him a volume scorer, and 25 points on 23 shots, that's pretty good.

You've got a team that had three days off playing against a team that played four games in five days, in four different cities, and a back-to-back situation. They played with a great amount of energy and they carried that energy to a win.

It seems like every team comes out and plays their best game against (us). As a team, it's like taking body shots every game.

I told our guys, we're not playing Milwaukee. We're playing ourselves. We have a certain way we want to play on offense and on defense. And if we do that, we give ourselves a chance to win against anybody. We can feel good about this right now. But we have to get back to work and prepare to go to Milwaukee.

It was intense. The players love to compete. The Spurs love to compete against big teams just like us. It was a good game to watch.

It's going to be a good challenge for us to play against them. I think our guys are all of the opinion, no matter what anyone says, when people play against us, they want to show that they're better than us or can beat us.

It's going to be a great challenging game for both teams. They are a great defensive team, but the reason we had some success in Minnesota was because of offensive ball movement and player movement. They want to lock you down on one side of the floor. If you can get the defense moving, you can have some success against them.