Flip Saunders Few Quotations

This was a good overall game for us. We did what we said we were looking to do with these last few games. We were sharp, we played a lot of people and were able to keep the starters' minutes down.

He's been like that the last few games. I like when he's a bit more aggressive. A part of it is he tries to conserve energy when he thinks he has to and gets other guys going.

Part of it is teams that were not very good have gotten better, which makes for a much more competitive conference. What developed for a few years in the Western Conference has now come back to the East, where there aren't really any gimme games.

I think what's happened is (starters) minutes have gone down in the last few games because of the play of (Antonio) McDyess, the play of Mo (Evans), the play of (Carlos) Delfino, the play of (Carlos) Arroyo. Those guys have played well, and if a team plays well, you keep them on the floor.

I think people will understand that when we go in together, they will understand what it really is all about. A few years ago ... there were rule changes that were made to make the game aesthetically better and to make the game more team oriented, not as individually oriented. I think the reward that the coaches gave our players kind of signified a little bit maybe that's the way our league is going.

We'll continue to throw different things. I think the last few games we've done a better job as far as some of our rotations.

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.

To our credit we came back and located him in the last few minutes, and didn't give him any good looks.

Things might shake out a little more in the next few days. Teams might have been hanging on to people to see if they could make a trade. Now they might let them go. You see a lot of guys go on waivers after the trade deadline. I'd say by Tuesday you'll know more about around the league from a roster standpoint.

When you get to 41 games you get him a few minutes at a time, start getting into the rhythm.

This is step one, but we don't want to be at step 10 right now anyway. We have a few weeks yet before we want to be at step 10.

I'm pretty comfortable right now. There're still a lot of things that can happen. You always continue to look and see what's available, and I think you wait. There will be things that shake out here in the next few days, I'm sure.

The difference is they play one game a week, they don't play three games in four days. We're kind of in a different situation. And part of it was how sharp we've been. We've been extremely sharp the last few weeks. That's how they played (Sunday) night together as a group.

If he does, we're going to play zone. And we'll see if those guys can shoot from 23 feet. (Johnson) might do it, but we have a few things up our sleeve.