Rick Carlisle Good Quotations

Most of these new arenas have very good color schemes so you don't have depth perception problems.

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.

We have to be honest; we're not a very good basketball team right now. We have to address things that need to be addressed.

He wants to play. It's a significant situation. It's day to day, but it's one of those things that's tough to gauge. We're hoping he feels good enough for Game 6, but we don't know. We'll have to see.

He did some good things. We have to keep working him on both ends of the floor with what we do.

He's done a lot of good things, considering the amount of time he's been out. But also, you can tell there's an adjustment period here. This is going to take some time to get to full strength.

Jermaine is a top player in this league and we all know he's missed a lot of games. Fortunately he's hitting his stride at a good time. We need him to continue to play at that kind of level for us to have success in the series.

Jermaine is a top player in this league. He missed a lot of games (this season) and it's taken him a while to get his conditioning and his rhythm back. Fortunately for us, he's hitting his stride at a good time.

I thought in the second half, we did a good job of sticking with what we had to do to give ourselves a chance. Our undoing is not playing 48 minutes at that level.

I thought he played well in the Houston game and he did some good things in the New York game. He's going to be an important guy for us with Freddie out.

It is great to be in a situation in which you have great players. You find out pretty early in this business that without good players you will not be a good coach. I have been fortunate to be in a very good situation. My job as a coach is to make sure that we progress every year and we can be a championship contender.

I think we could throw him out there tonight. He'd go out there and he'd have a good feel for the game. It would be hard for him on defense with the schemes we run.

I thought we got some pretty good looks at the end. It's disappointing to work that hard to get the lead and lose it. It's tough.

I thought Tinsley did well considering he hasn't played. I wanted to make sure we didn't put him out there for too long a period of time. He did some good things, but it's going to be tough in some areas because the conditioning isn't going to be the way you want it to be. It was good to see him back.

Three days ago it looked like it might be a possibility. He is doing better. It's just not the right time to push it. Also, if we would have did it, he would have been playing a game without almost any practice time leading up to it, which would have been hard. It makes it tough because he does a good job on (Shaquille O'Neal).

We had one of the best practices we've had in the 21/2 years I've been here. Guys really seemed committed to getting better. Little things like that are good signs. You hope it translates to the games, but you never know.

We have a lot of confidence in all of our guys. If you have good players you need to use them, because not every team has this kind of depth. If guys play well they stay in the game. It gives us a chance to keep our starters fresh. It was a real key.

We're not a very good basketball team right now. This was very disappointing.

We're not a very good basketball team right now. This was very disappointing. We couldn't hit a bull in the butt with a bass fiddle. The ball not going in in the third was key.

Michael Redd was a guy we talked a lot of about before the game. (Jackson) did a good job at the start and our whole team reacted to him.

We hoped he was going to be open and have a pocket of space to get an open shot or drive the ball. Bosh did a great job of switching out defensively. I have to take the blame for that. That was a bad call putting a guy in a position that ended up not being a good position.

We had a lot of good looks, we just didn't hit the shots.

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 tried some. Johnson is a guy that was doing a good job of staying out of harm's way when it came to that (sixth) foul. We did a couple of things, but if you go too much out of what's working to try to get a sixth foul, you can disrupt your own team. That's something you don't want to do.

We did it for three quarters, but down the stretch, we just didn't. We didn't step up like a good team should.

When we're playing well, there are very few teams that are as good as us. When things don't go well for us, that's when we have to look in the mirror as a group and figure out how to collect ourselves and continue on a path that's the best way for winning. We've got some soul searching to do.

Yao has been playing great for a long stretch. I thought our guys battled him and did a good job in a lot of areas, but we could have done better as a team. You give up 38, that's a lot.

We're doing some things better, but we're not a perfect team. We have to do things a certain way and we have to be very precise at both ends of the court to give ourselves a chance to win against good teams, especially on the road.

We set a great tone early with a great defensive effort, and that sort of carried the day as far as the game went. Tonight we did a lot of things well and I thought we got better as a team, so that's a good sign.

We'd like to get out and run and do some good things on offense. But if you can't get the stops, it's going to be hard to do that. We're going to have to be better at both ends, but after the last couple of games on the defensive end, that is going to have to become more of a priority for us.

We're excited to move up in the standings by winning. I wish I could say we are playing really good basketball, but we obviously have struggled. It's been a tough road. We've got some things to do to look more like a team that can really compete at a high level in the playoffs.

When we had good shots, we couldn't get them to go. We weren't good enough tonight, and they were very good, really, for the whole game.

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.

Early, you could tell he was getting his feet under him. As the game went on, you could see the things he has the ability to do offensively and defensively. He's going to be a very good defensive player.

We always knew he was a good all-around player. From afar, we always felt he would be a better individual defender than what he was given credit for just from watching him play against our team. He's a guy that always had pretty good rebounding numbers for a (small forward).

You can't do that and beat a good team like that.

We've been on a day-to-day basis with him a lot of the year. We have to see each day where he is. If he's feeling good and can help us, we have to take advantage of it.

The second and third quarters hurt us defensively. We struggled and had some stretches where we couldn't stop them. Detroit is a team that is going to do a good job in the last play type of situations, but I'm more in tune to what happened in the second and third quarters than on the last play.

There won't be any tough decisions when it comes to determining who to keep on the playoff roster. Our hope then is we can get back to 100 percent good health.

With him, it usually comes down to the kind of shots he's getting. We have to work to get him high-quality shots. When he gets good quality shots, he plays very efficiently.

The good news is he is feeling better; the bad news is he's not ready to get on a plane and come out here and play.

Detroit played great. They really hurt us on the boards. We didn't play a good game and they had a lot to do with it.

There's a feeling that our players are misinterpreted and a little misunderstood because of various factors. Dress would be one of them. As a league, we know we have good people. We have great guys on our team. . . . I feel like what our team did last year (after the brawl) is a much better indicator of the character and quality of people in our league than anything else people might want to surmise in terms of perception.

There's no doubt right now that (Jackson) is our main guy. He's going to make some things happen for us. He's going to get some good looks at the basket.

The whole game we were shooting in the 30s and we could never get anything going offensively to set up our defense. When you get behind big you end up taking more 3s than you want to take, and 32 is a number that's too many. If you're taking that many, you're probably playing from behind and not in a very good position.

You take away the first 20 games of their season and they have a very respectable record and they've beaten a lot of good teams. We struggle against them and we have to find a way to turn that around.

I just want him to play his game. We try to encourage our players to play to their strengths. His strength is his vision. He has the ability to be a very good shooter when he's in condition and got his rhythm. He's getting closer to that.

They were shredding us; they have the players to do it. We weren't doing a good job.

It'll be one of the questions when you look back in history. How good could this guy have been? I'm not sure that there was any limit to his potential. It was just not to be.

It's clear off the last few games that he's a difference maker for us. I'm not going to look to play three guys just to play three guys. I'm going to look to try to have a rotation where guys can be comfortable. But you have to be accountable and play your minutes hard. Otherwise there are good players behind you; that's the fact. Our point position hasn't been this strong in a long time. It's good news for us.

It was a big bounce back game for our team. I thought Jermaine set the tone for our team early in the game. The way it unfolded, it appeared he had a pretty good sense on how to establish himself.

It was a good effort by our team. Very solid and our shot making was there. We feel like it was a really good win for us, especially coming off the West Coast road trip.

These guys aren't coming out of nowhere anymore. People know who the good people are, what teams they're on, what their contract situations are.

A.J. again was terrific. A lot of guys did good things. We need to have five or six guys play at high level to win, whether we are at home or on the road.

It just goes to show you even if you shoot well, the turnovers are going to get you. You would love to have a chance to see if you can continue to shoot a good percentage, but those balls you lose to turnovers are fast-break opportunities for the other team. The wins, you take them and run.

It's always good to win and we had a lot of good things happen. The way we are structured right now, we have to play more up tempo, but the key to the game was the way we picked up our intensity on defense in the second half.

You can't look at their record. They've been a problem for us the last two years. We did some good things to put us in a strong situation and made some mistakes.

It's a significant situation. It is day to day, but it's one of these things that's tough to gauge. We hope he feels good enough to play in Game 6, but I don't know; we'll have to wait and see.

It's just too bad, because we really played hard for three quarters. The second quarter was really a disaster for us. It put us in a bad position at halftime, but we fought back and really put ourselves in a good position to win.

We had the game going pretty well and we were playing good basketball. They made a run at the end of the half and they got the game tied and I thought that gave them a lot of momentum going into the second half. They did a great job of finishing off plays.

We missed shots and didn't do a good job defensively. When you let the other team shoot 75 percent in the first quarter, you're going to dig a hole. We have to do better in all areas.

We hung in, competed, and had chances. We created a lot of good looks for ourselves, but weren't able to make some of the easiest shots we had on the whole trip.

It's bad news that we had an opportunity to move up and didn't, but it's good news that everybody lost. Right now, that stuff isn't as important as how we're playing over a course of 48 minutes. We have to tighten some areas to give ourselves a chance to win against anybody.

It's a good thing we have an extra 2 guard over there. We're going to need it.

We knew he was somehow going to touch it, whether or not he was going to hand it off to somebody else or take the shot. We had three straight timeouts to talk about it. We did a good job on the first two plays, and the third one they got us and got an open look. We're fortunate to be going back to the hotel with a win.

We got a little lucky and dodged a hand grenade at the end. West got a good look. You have to get lucky and dodge a couple of those.

We just gotta try to continue to build on what's been a pretty good week of basketball and we've got one more opportunity before the playoffs start and it's important for us.

It's a very good sign. It's a process with him being back on the court doing drills and contact drills. At some point, we're hoping he can be cleared.

They're a good team that's going to do a good job in those situations. We probably could have executed better.