Flip Saunders Gave Quotations

Mo (Evans) gave us a boost at both ends tonight. Guys have confidence in him. The guys on the bench want to play more, but they have to do what he did. He came with the right frame of mind.

Mo gave us a spark at both ends of the court.

The only negative was I wanted to play Carlos (Delfino) and I didn't. I think he could have probably helped us. We went with Mo, and Mo gave us energy.

We surrounded (Kevin). We brought in two veteran players in Sam Mitchell and Terry Porter that we thought were two very professional type individuals that would show him how to handle practice situations, what it was to be professionals, to prepare for practice, to prepare for games, how to deal as far as off the floor, not to put yourself in any awkward-type situations. And then we tried to communicate with him. Our biggest thing was we gave him enough responsibility on the court that he was able to perform, yet still improve.

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 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.

I thought that (since) these guys play together, they can get some organization. We went through some stuff with Paul, and he seemed to pick things up and play pretty well with those guys and gave us another dimension.

Tony is a high-energy guy, and that's one of the reasons that when he became available, he was somebody we really wanted to look at. We thought he gave us a different dimension from what we had on the roster.

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.

It's not always about how many points they score. I thought our bench really gave us a lift tonight in a lot of different ways.

Charles (Barkley, TNT commentator) gave a great talk for us at halftime. He said the game was over.

We got out of it what we wanted. Our main guys played really well, especially in the third quarter when they turned the heat up. We worked on some of our trap defenses that were really effective. Then we gave our young guys some fourth-quarter experience.