Flip Saunders Good Quotations

Like I said, I think a coach is as good as the players he has. You do have to drive them. You've got to make sure to put them in the right situations. And we have a group that's very committed as far as what we're doing.

What I didn't understand was how good he can be defensively, blocking shots and he has a pretty good presence of understanding what he's supposed to do in the team concept defensively,

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.

Going into this game we needed the bench to give us both good minutes and good production, which they did. Chicago plays physical, they play hard. But to our credit, we can play that way.

He's just going to have to be a good boy. Bite his lip. We were thinking of getting Judge Judy, getting it on TV. But I don't think commissioner ( David ) Stern would go for that one. They'd probably get very great ratings.

We can feel good about winning, get over it and get back to business tomorrow. I think the big thing with us, we're not playing Milwaukee, we're playing ourselves.

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

He had a good look when he came off, and I saw Ricky (Davis) was trailing him. I knew he was going to get a good look, and earlier we were doing our shooting games and Rip said, 'I never miss from the corner.' So when he got it down there, I felt pretty good.

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.

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 everyone thought he had the opportunity to be a good player. I thought he was a good player when I came here, but I never understood how good he was until I saw him day in and day out. His commitment to the game, his commitment to the team, and just how versatile he is.

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 .

Rip did a good job of understanding where help might be, tried to send him to as much help as he could and contested pretty much most of his shots.

Our starters broke a sweat and didn't get too stale or hurt and I was happy to see the young guys play. It was good to see those guys in that type of situation.

I think from talking to a lot of coaches, I'd say there's a pretty good chance of three going and a possibility of four. Just from talking to coaches. But you've had a lot of coaches say they would vote for five. Whether five could make it would be tough. Even if four makes it -- even three -- when you don't have any of them voted in by the fans, that's pretty unbelievable.

I think I recall that we lost our last couple games in the exhibition season, and we got off to a pretty good start with the regular season. These guys have been there. They know that this is when it all begins.

I thought we came out with a good focus, especially after a back-to-back. We came out methodically offensively and defensively went into a swarming defense and controlled things right from the beginning.

To have 36 assists on 43 baskets shows that we are playing team basketball. We aren't as good as we looked tonight, and we aren't as bad as we looked in Dallas.

We have to know that they have other guys that are capable. Charlie Bell has played well. T.J. Ford had a pretty good game overall and we've got to continue to find those two. Just do what we normally do. Our philosophy is to contest whatever shot is taken, try to limit three-point shots and rebound the basketball. Those are three things we did.

We've had different people carry us at different times. That's what has made this a very good team, and has made us tougher to play against.

That was too good a look. But Maurice did a nice job closing out on him.

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

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 ran about three different options last night and had some pretty good success with some of them.

We kept him out today. He's getting treatment. He's going to be OK. It's probably good that we have a couple days off and don't have a short turnaround, because it gives him more of a chance to get ready.

Whether we play well or don't play well come Sunday, will have no bearing on how we've done this season. As I recall, we lost our last couple games in the exhibition season and got off to a pretty good start in the regular season.

We're doing a lot of good things on defense and that's how we're winning as many games as we are.

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

Ben was phenomenal defensively. It was good that we were able to get Ben some good extended rest. He's going to be bench-pressing a lot of weight on Wednesday.

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.

We moved the ball well, had 35 assists, 12 turnovers and rebounded the ball well. We had a good overall performance.

The satisfying thing is, right now we've put basically 16 games in the loss column between us and the next closest team in our division. When you can do that with 26 games to go, you're in pretty good shape.

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.

We went to our bread-and-butter play to see how they were guarding it. They were starting to cheat over the top, so we decided to throw up over it a little bit, and we got some good looks and we got some separation. That's why (Hamilton is) an All-Star.

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.

Right now, they're not as predictable. With Jermaine a lot, they came down, they threw it in the post, they played off him a lot. Here, they go to different people, they have a lot more ball movement, player movement. It's an offense geared toward everybody. I think Rick (Carlisle) has done a really good job with that group since they made that move.

You never feel like you're in good shape. These are all winnable games, but they're all games you have to go out and play. No one's going to give you the game.

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.

It's incentive to get days off. ... Any time you can get in a playoff situation where you can get a three- or four-day rest, it's almost like a mini-training camp situation, and you can get back to your basics. Get back and have a couple of good practices and really kind of get calmed down from winning a series and get rejuvenated and get back up and get into that crescendo where you're playing extremely well again for the first game.

It's incentive to get days off (to rest players) and preparation for coaches. Any time you can get into a playoff situation and get a three- or four-day rest, you can get back to your basics with some good practices.

It was a good learning experience for those young guys to play a team that was basically in a must-win situation.

It'll be a good situation for him to get in and get a feel of things, and hopefully he'll play well and use this as kind of a building block for the next eight games.

It was a great reception. A lot of great fans, the people were great tonight and it was a good evening.

That's a decision that every day as a team they have to make. Fortunately for us, those two guys are pretty good decision makers, and depending on what they give us, is what we'll usually take.

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.

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.

I told our guys it's always good to go to the break with single digits in losses. That's always a good sign.

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's a credit to the way these guys came into camp and came in focused. They've made some big plays. I thought we could get off to a good start but you can't expect to go 20-3.

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.

I'd say that 37 points, nine assists and one turnover make a pretty good statement for the All-Star game. He felt good tonight, and when he feels that good, we're just going to let him go.

And I didn't understand how good a perimeter shooter he was and how good a passer he was. He's got some things as a coach you can't teach, as far as his feel for the game passing-wise.