Flip Saunders Coming Quotations

Carlos works extremely hard on defense. He is big and extremely strong. Now he is starting to understand where the help is coming from. He is learning how to pressure his man into the help, and he isn't feeling like he's out there on an island so much.

I was worried coming into this game because I heard at shoot-around some guys mention Miami. I was concerned that they'd overlook Atlanta.

I think if I didn't enjoy this team so much and wasn't having so much fun, things could become really difficult with being away from my family. But everything is fine. I love coming to work every day.

I thought, 'You're coming to a team that just won a championship and was five minutes away from winning another,' so your question is how receptive will they be to what you want to do,

I was more concerned coming in with the defense. I feel in time, we're going to be able to do preparation to be effective offensively. Let's make sure we don't lose our identity defensively.

We have players we are trying to get rest over the next 11 games. But you get into the heat of the battle sometimes and you need a billy club to get them out of the game sometimes because they are so competitive. We might have a few tangles coming down the stretch.

Coming in from the outside, you could see that this team was hurt from what happened last year in Game 7. Sometimes you think over the course of time, they say that time heals wounds. But time just didn't seem to heal that wound.

When you get up 15 in your division through 45 games, what you're trying to do is you're focusing on what you have ahead and that's the playoffs. I think the players are going to be very focused and very excited about coming here Sunday night and playing in front of a great crowd in a great atmosphere.

We did a good job setting screens. We changed it a little bit on some of his runs. He did more change of pace. He'd change, run, stop, then he took off again. And Chauncey delivered. We set screens a little bit lower to get Rip a little bit more room coming off those screens to try and read.

He's worked hard. He's come in more than some of the other guys. He's been coming in at night, like 8 p.m., and shooting for an hour, hour and a half.

It's one of those things, if you put him out there for 10 minutes, he wants 15. If you put him out there for 15, he wants 20. That's the toughest thing about young players coming to championship-caliber teams.

It's like he's coming out of the weight room.

They don't quit. They keep on coming at you. There were times we had them down, they could have (given up), but they came right back. That's why they've been able to beat some good teams lately.

This was a workmanlike performance coming off a big win. That's what you like to see.