Byron Scott Quotations

I was going to say he's going to be a great player. But I think he's pretty close to that already. He's going to be a superstar in this league. There's no doubt about that.

(NBA commissioner David) Stern and the league put us all in a bind. We understand the situation. We're going to play another year in Oklahoma City, and then after that we have no idea what's going to happen.

When I looked at the schedule, I thought he could miss 10 games at the worst.

One positive of having a young team is they don't quit,

No fear or concern at all. We're going to take it for what it is, a real important game for us. We probably have to win the next few games, simple as that.

Right now I'm disappointed because we are not ready to play in the second half. We are coming down the floor like we are down 30 points, putting up threes and not getting into the lane. I thought we were soft on defense, soft on the boards. That tells me we're scared.

Right now, he looks like the Antonio of old.

Right now, he looks like the Antonio of old. I told him tonight it was good to see him back.

We made a lot of changes this year and thought we'd gotten much more athletic. I didn't know we were going to have the same problems on the defensive end. Guys are getting beaten off the dribble like drums, and then when the help comes, the other guys aren't coming in.

When you can take the thinking part out of it and you can just play and react, it makes the game a lot easier. Right now, he's just playing.

Monday is a possibility. It just depends on how well his process of healing goes. We didn't want to take a chance on these couple of games.

Most of these guys want some type of stability. They want to know where they're going to be, how long they're going to be there and if they have families, they want their wives to be there, their kids in a certain school. It's going to be a challenge.

When he has his first three or four shots with nobody near him, and he makes those. Then it doesn't matter who's on him after that. They did a good job finding him, setting good picks for him.

Luckily, it wasn't his ribs. We'll just add that to his repertoire of injuries. He's going to Houston (for All-Star Weekend), I told him to have fun, but be careful, we need him healthy for the stretch run.

So I said, 'Let's take two weeks and get your body completely healed. That allowed us to get Junior back here ... and now we're not struggling with Danny going 40-plus minutes every night.

Kirk (Snyder) deserves a shot. Kirk works his butt off every day. He's still out here. Matter of fact, do you see J.R.? (Smith had left.) That pretty much tells it. It's work ethic -- he has to work harder.

He just doesn't seem real sure of what he's doing out there right now. Again, it goes back to repetition and knowing how to run our offense. . . . I can't wait for Speedy to get back.

He just had a game of his life. Hopefully he can keep playing like that or somewhere near like that.

Great players make great plays. Kobe hit some big shots.

Fourteen down, in this league, with 12 minutes left in the game is nothing. We relaxed. On the defensive end, they get any shot they want. And then you try to pick it back up offensively, and you're dead. We have done that three or four times already this season.

I expect both those guys to get opportunities and contribute to the team. And both those guys have shown improvement from last year to this year.

I don't understand it myself. That's what happens when you have a bunch of young guys. We played a good first half but it is just inexperience that causes losses like this.

I don't think you can just throw this out and forget it. I think you have to see why a game like this happened, see why all of a sudden we go from 59-49 and then for more than 10 minutes, we don't score.

I don't think you can let it go until you know exactly what's going on. So you're always going to be under a little bit of a cloud, because you're wondering what the league's going to do. You're still wondering in New Orleans, how quickly can the city rebuild? There's still a lot of pressure that a lot of us have.

I don't know what our record is going against him. I know in Jersey my second and third years, we had a good team. But that doesn't matter. He's still a great coach.

Having Magic Johnson and Michael Cooper kind of take me under their wing, I didn't really have to worry a whole lot.

I'll always bleed purple and gold, but I'm not going to give up any wins.

He's playing really well. He's in a groove right now and is playing more comfortable. I told him with the way he's shooting the ball, I need to find ways to get him the ball more.

He was motivated. He was coming home, he had about 500 people coming to see him today, so he wanted to win the game and play well. We were able to accomplish both.

He can score. He has a knack for putting the ball in the basket. He's a natural small forward. All the little things that we have to teach him to play the game at 20 years old is going to take him a little time. But I think he's worth it.

He had his best year in Phoenix playing the type of basketball that we play.

He was well-adjusted in October. He's just having fun. He's playing hard and he knew this was a game that we had to win.

He's going to have to really grasp it a lot quicker. He seems to have some trouble with it. But once he gets there, I think he's going to be pretty good.

He's always said that he would love to someday play in Toronto, and that's understandable. That's his hometown. But he's never come in here with a bad attitude. He's been a true professional every single day. He knows this is where he's going to be playing for the time being, and he's giving us 100 percent.

Hopefully this is something that will be uplifting and bring happiness to the fans that come to the game and cheer us on.

We can go 10 deep very easily. Speedy is a guy that can play extended minutes for us off the bench and give us a boost. I loved the way he came out and got after it on defense and played hard.

He gives us another guy that can really just go up and down the floor, that can fly. He just plays big-time minutes and he's a tough kid.

He had a guy that beat him out, and to me that's the bottom line. That's all it's about. If you look at our record with him as a starter and you look at our record with Kirk as a starter, to me that speaks for itself.

He has the ultimate confidence in his stuff with what he's capable of doing.

He has the ultimate confidence in his stuff with what he's capable of doing. I think it's just special for him to play at the Garden because he knows how historic this arena is.

The people have been incredible, ... I walked into a place last night, and the person said, 'You guys are like movie stars. We don't know how to act.' I said, 'No, we're just normal people. We just want to be wanted.'

He made all the big shots at the end. That's what great players do.

He feels pretty good, but they want to give him a couple of more days.

We took care of tonight. That was the first phase. Now we have to get these games on the road. Each day that goes by we continue to get closer to our goal.

We think for us and for him, it's probably the best thing to do.

Just the fact that all of those guys had a chance to be here for a few days and get around the city and see some of the devastation that Katrina left made them feel a little guilty. I think the guys felt a little guilty after the last game that they had to come in and give a better effort.

Like I told the guys, that's a good basketball team. We hung in there, we kept fighting, but that is no consolation. We still have to learn how to get over the hump.

Marc Jackson is a banger, a very physical guy who can make shots.

That door is still open. It hasn't shut on us yet.

I said a few weeks ago that J.R. wasn't playing well and if it continued, I would have to make some changes, and today was the perfect time to do that.

I said he would be a great player. I think he might be that already. Nights like this prove he is going to be a superstar in this league.

Our main thing is to make sure when we come back when the All-Star break is over with, our momentum hasn't changed and we come out with the same type of intensity and aggression that we started with.

I think everyone started to hang their heads a little bit when Chris went out of the game. It looked pretty bad. I think it took a few minutes to remember we had a basketball game to win.

Jason plays at 110 percent in every game. We need other guys to join him. That's the bottom line.

Our guys feel real comfortable here. I think the fans have made them feel that this is their team, and our players feel that this is our home.

I stop talking to people that don't listen. I'm not going to waste my breath I don't understand what more (he) wants.

I stop talking when people don't listen. I'm not going to waste my breath.

I still think he's got a little bit of a stinger in that shoulder so he's going to continue to get treatment on that and ice it down more for precautionary reasons than anything. Right now, he's just trying to prevent that thing from flaring back up and going back to where it was at the beginning.

I think the energy in the crowd has been a tremendous boost to our team. We've got a lot of young guys and they feed off that type of energy. When you have a college atmosphere and you have a young team, this is what they like to play in front of.

I think they are starting to get it a little bit. We have guys who are starting to step up right now.

I think a few of those guys in that locker room have quit. It's disappointing to me; (those guys) won't be here, it's as simple as that. We have no mental or physical toughness on this team right now. It's just hard to watch that; it's hard to watch these young guys that don't understand and don't get it.

I think all the players, everybody in our organization is glad that it's over with and the decision has been made and we can just keep looking forward to playing basketball.

Rod said the guy was the real deal, so I asked him why did he fire him. Rod said that he (Scott) had a problem with one of the players for something Byron said to the media.

I think everybody's excited about getting the season started, but there's going to be a lot of people that start to think back on where we're supposed to be in New Orleans and what happened in New Orleans. You're going to get some mixed feelings.

I think guys are still adjusting a little, but I think the shock of the move has worn off. I think everybody here is pretty much settled. But just like me, you don't have everything from home, New Orleans, that you had, so you're constantly shifting stuff.

It doesn't hurt us defensively. We're probably a little better defensively but it definitely hurts us offensively. He's one of the guys that we can spread the defense out a little bit with his shooting ability.

It feels like home. The only time we're living out of suitcases is when we're on the road.

I think the one thing he wants to do is impress not only us, but other teams around this league to get back in this league. Once these guys are out, they tend to realize how good the NBA is - how much better it is up here - even if you're the 12th guy.

I think they would understand. All the people that were in Louisiana before the hurricane are not there right now, so I don't think the fan base is there right now for our basketball team, especially right now in this month. It might change in March.

It gives us a different dimension, because we don't rely on one or two guys. We rely on five or six guys. If you have a point guard like Jason Kidd, it makes it easier for everyone else to fall into place.

I thought our effort was much better. Defensively we're just having way too many lapses. Guys aren't communicating out there and talking to each other. You give up (52) points in the paint, you're not going to win too many games.

I think you've always got to worry about that. I'm sure the people in New Orleans are feeling that we're losing our team, so to speak. Like we keep saying, we're just trying to make sure that everything here is going well. When the city is back together and ready, we're looking forward to going back there and playing.

I thought (Bass) was going to go up there and at least make one. I thought he played really well tonight. There's a lot of things he still has to learn, but his energy and his effort were big for us.

I thought we had gotten to the point that both parties were OK with it. We're disappointed and I'm sure he is. He was looking forward to being here.

It always feels good, but it feels good just to see him back out there. I'm just glad to see him back on the sidelines.

I think it's a good thing for our team right now. If we can win games without Chris, I think it gives these guys even more confidence. And it also shows when he comes back that we'll even be better.

I think it's cool. I think it's just a way of showing Oklahoma City how much we appreciate them for all they've done for us this season.

I think it's going to be wild and crazy. It's going to be fun. It's going to be a great atmosphere.

I think it's important to give them a product where we go out and play extremely hard every night,

I thought we were soft. Soft on defense. Soft on the boards. That tells me we're scared.

I thought we came out better than we have the last five or six games. It just seems like in the last two or three minutes of each quarter, they hurt us. The Spurs are a championship team and they can really buckle down on you defensively during those stretches. The one thing I want more than anything right now is to compete and I felt like we did that tonight.

I thought they did a fantastic job cheering us on.

Three or four years ago, he was a pretty damn good scorer down low and outside. Hopefully, he still has that type of potential.

We were soft. That's why we got down 12-0. We were soft the whole game.

We came out here and thought it was going to be an easy night. That's when a team has to know they mentally have to go after it even more.

We came out in the third quarter and acted like we were walking in the park. Then as the game gets tight, we try to turn that light switch back on. Very rarely in this league are you going to be able to do that.

We were happy with two straight wins and that was satisfying enough for us instead of trying to come in here and get one against a very good basketball team.

The problems we have to correct are all between the ears. It's not so much the physical problems. We have too many guys who don't understand, who don't get it. I don't know. Maybe we're reading too many of the clippings. Maybe we're thinking we're better than we are.

We'll go back to the drawing board. We had different scenarios drawn up before we got Steven, so we'll go to plan B.

We didn't come out with any fire, any emotion or any intensity and they took advantage of it. We came out very lackadaisical. We just didn't play the second half the way we are capable of playing. We were soft and they did whatever they wanted.

I would love to play here. I would love to stay here and play in Oklahoma City next year. I think our guys are at home here. I think the fans have been unbelievable. Out of our 12 home wins, I think the fans out there have won half of them. So, I would prefer to stay here next year.

I worry about him every day. Every game, there's a possibility of the thing getting hit and knocked out of place or something.

We just did a terrible job defensively for pretty much the whole game.

That's basically what we did for about an hour and a half, and we'll do it everyday until they start to get it.

We got the shot we wanted. I think he (West) took one too many dribbles and got off-balance.

We haven't jumped on these rookies yet with some of things that they're going to have to do - the singing and dancing and all that stuff - but that day is coming, too.

We were able to get a young center that we feel is going to get much better and better, that's shown improvement. He had his best year in Phoenix playing the type of basketball that we play. And then we got a veteran in Aaron Williams. We've still got our first-round picks.

We were able to get a young centre that we feel is going to get much better and better, that has shown improvement. (Plus) we got a veteran in Aaron Williams (and) we've still got our first-round picks.

With all the adversity we've faced, I told them before the game that you guys have always done a good job of coming together in the face of adversity. That is something we're going to have to do, not just tonight, but the rest of the season.

We played hard tonight. We had the tempo in our favor and that's the type of basketball that we want to play.