Rick Carlisle Ball Quotations

I'd like to keep him in the mid-20s if there's any way possible to do that, because that gives him enough energy to really pursue the ball and finish off plays on the inside. I thought the fact that we had to play him 37 minutes the other night in Houston had an effect on that one play late where he got to the rim, but couldn't quite get it in.

I go back to our turnover situation. If they are down, we are going to rebound the ball better because we're going to get more offensive boards and be able to get back and guard people and get more defensive boards.

We have to avoid becoming stagnant. We knew at some point Orlando would hit a stretch where they hit shots. We also knew that when that happened we had to keep the ball moving on offense and not slow it down and get into isolation plays. That bogged us down in recent games. I thought we did a good job of staying away from that.

Lineup changes are always a possibility in the playoffs, but it doesn't matter if we keep turning the ball over and getting into foul trouble.

I think the guys rallied behind the fact that we lost (O'Neal). It's important for us to understand what can be accomplished collectively when we share the ball and work at the defensive end.

We set it up a little differently. AJ (Johnson) had been going good and we figured that they react to his movement on the court. They switched everything and got crossed up. Jack got open and laid the ball in.

We're behind the eight ball in terms of our personnel that are available. We're going to have to fly by the seat of our pants here, and figure out enough ways to score enough points and get stops.

When you turn it over 22 times for 30 points, you're not going to beat a top team. One of the characteristics of our recent good play is we haven't been turning the ball over and we've been rebounding well. Tonight, that was part of our undoing.

Unbelievable sequence of events at the end. When you have opportunities to close out games, you've got to take advantage of them. On the play at the end of regulation, we had a chance to get the rebound, the ball gets knocked loose, and Johnson hits the three.

We wanted to get the ball into Stephen Jackson's hands. He had been a major force for us the whole game. That last basket of ours was indicative of the whole game. He made the unselfish pass to the open man.

If you play in the first round of the playoffs, it's a 100-game season. It's Game 1 of a 100. We got our eye on the ball and we don't want to take any unnecessary risk.

It's been tough for Fred this year because of the thumb; he's been in and out of it. He played great in the first two games, and I wanted to give him the opportunity to start and play a real significant stretch of minutes. We struggled to get him the ball (Saturday). I have to do a better job of putting him in a position where he can attack the basket and make plays. He wasn't able to do that, that's his game.

It seemed like we were throwing it to the guys in orange the entire first half. We were (lazy) with the ball and on defense and they were able to build a double-digit lead. Second half, we were able to buckle down, get some stops, get the lead, and hold on for a much-needed win.

It's different, but he played college ball at Maryland in the ACC so he's very familiar with American basketball and he knows the NBA game because he studied it a lot and he's played against a lot of the players. The learning curve for him as a 29-year-old shouldn't be that great.

He's struggled lately shooting the ball and I was concerned he was due to come out of it. He's playing very well. What he's doing defensively has everybody in the league taking notice.

You could tell it was affecting his game offensively just because so many things involved with shooting the ball happen with your left hand. Rhythmically, he just wasn't the same over the last week or 10 days.

It's essential that we have some time to get him re-integrated into our team. There's going to be an adjustment here because we've been running a lot more, we've been doing a lot more movement stuff. We're going to have to continue with that but at times the ball is going to have to go through him inside.

We have to defend better, not turn the ball over and stay out of foul trouble.

We hung in and were able to get stops when we had to. It's really tough because Iverson is a nightmare out there. The combination of timely stops and the ability to get the ball in the basket when we had to made a difference for us.

He's not Reggie Miller from the 3-point line, but he's not far from it in terms of his ability to get the ball in the basket, ... For me, Jack is an NBA shooter. He is an NBA-caliber shooter, which means he's going to shoot in the high 30s (percent) from 3.