LESTER CONNER
Friday, November 17, 2006 | 3:00 p.m.

Overall, what does the team need to do to beat the Pacers?
Limit Jermaine O’Neal and Al Harrington’s scoring abilities, cut down there scoring their numbers. They are sixth in the NBA in fast break points so we don’t want to give up a lot of those. We also want to make them earn everything, give them no easy baskets. What I mean by that is no easy lay-ups, wide open shots, and keeping them off the foul line.

What does the team need to do to improve their overall defense?
Effort, energy, and the belief in their teammates if they get beat they have somebody back there that’s going to help them. The trust factor and communications are very important. There is no general area. A good defensive team is a team that does everything consistently. Whether it be communication, help-side defense, one-on-one ball containment, or keeping guys off the offensive glass. I think if we do all these things together we will become a better defensive team.

Being 3-6, what would you say the team's goal (record-wise) is for the next month?
Well, we obviously want to come out within the next month and be above .500. I think if we do that we will start feeling good about ourselves. We have a chance to run off two, three, four games in a row even though we have some people hurt. Indiana back-to-back are both winnable games. We have always played them very tough and given them problems. Philly and Boston, we beat both of them three out of four last year. So there are some teams that are coming up that we’ve had good success against. If we just realize that and play to our capabilities we should be fine.

Being a former player what does playing 6 of your first 9 games on the road do to you as a player? How does your body react to it?
Particularly when you are a young team you don’t really necessarily know how valuable the rest factor is and the eating/nutrition is. Making sure you're getting your liquids in you and getting rest are very important. I think it has taught us a valuable lesson and has made us road-tough. Coming off the road trip we had a chance to beat New Jersey if some shots would have gone down. We went into Detroit and beat them by playing hard. Atlanta was in front of their division and we went in there and battled them and got a win. So I think it is doing nothing but preparing us for the long stretch.