Rick Carlisle High Quotations

If we hadn't won three games, we could be well out of the playoffs. That's not what we want. We want to be in and have a chance to get as high a seed as we can.

Jack is such an important guy on our team. Our players view him as one of our leaders. You have to have your top players involved and playing at a high level. I thought tonight Jack understood the defensive end was going to be what was going to win the game for us.

He's fit in well. He's a proven NBA player who's played at a high level for many years.

Our point guard position was really tremendous, especially in the second half. That's the kind of production we need at all our positions. Let's face it, we're the kind of team right now where we're playing eight guys (Friday). We need six out of eight (players) playing at a high level to beat a team like Sacramento.

Our undoing was the fact we're not playing 48 minutes at home at a high level. That's got to change.

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.

At this point, he's going to make a full recovery. He's actually doing very well, but the high level of exertion and the contact has sort of re-introduced a couple of symptoms that the medical people, from a precautionary standpoint, feel he should shut it down for awhile.

It was a deceptive final score. It was obviously a very difficult game. Our bench struggled, but the guys that started held it together. Anthony Johnson played just a tremendous all around game. He's really playing at a high level right now. He is getting the job done, simply as that.

The group that was out there was going good. I didn't want to disrupt that momentum at that point. You're getting into a high frequency of games. If you find a group that's clicking, you have to stick with them.

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's about learning the league, learning the guys he's playing against, what their tendencies are and what their strengths are because those are important things to defend well, ... We have a system of defense that's solid and he's in the process of learning that. For him, he's an experienced enough player and certainly has a high enough basketball IQ that he can pick it up quickly.

It's about winning games, and right now, we have to focus in on the guys we have and doing our best possible job at playing at a high level to give ourselves a chance to win.

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.

For the last 10 days, we've spent a lot of time on fundamentals, individual work, screening and footwork. We know that doing the little things at a high level is going to be key for us winning some games.