( 6 - 11 )

( 13 - 6 )

Skiles

On his team’s defense:
“I am happy with that because we came in and made a lot of hustle plays, and the offensive boards kept us in the game early, which were all effort plays. We were able to get after loose balls in key moments, get good stops, score enough to win and overall a great effort.”

On Detroit:
“They are 13-6 and in first place so I don’t think it is for me to be dissecting their team because those guys are great players and night after night they punish people. They were going to what was working, which is what we were doing.”

On Nocioni:
“I think he was 1-5 at halftime and then we kept going to him and nothing seems to faze him. He is just out there playing basketball and he has been valuable thus far in the year.”

On the win:
“It is good to get a win and we have been playing better lately. However, we still have some kinks to work out and we have a great team to play tomorrow. It’s the NBA though; you don’t get to celebrate too long.”

Wallace

On Nocioni:
“He played well and he has been playing well the last couple of games. He is one of those guys that is going to come out, put his head down and get to the basket. Once he gets on a roll like that, he is capable of hitting the three-ball and extending the defense, and tonight he did a great job of passing the basketball, he showed a little bit of all of that tonight.”

On rebounding early:
“We had opportunities to get to the offensive boards, and we came out with a lot of energy early. This got us out in front and is something we need to do a little more often to see how it feels to play from out in front instead of always trying to come back at the end.”

Nocioni

On his team:
“We have a lot of confidence right now and we need to keep moving the ball, driving to the basket, take the open shot and play hard.”

On setting the tone by driving:
“Right now we are more aggressive, we are playing much better than we have and we are playing like a team that is passing well. We should start heading in the right direction.”

On rebounding:
“It was big for us. We dominated the glass on offense and defensive. It was important for us to do that against Detroit because they are a long team and have a lot of people that can rebound well.”

Saunders

“Tonight was a prime example. Early we didn't rebound the basketball at all, gave them too many opportunities. Like I said, they're a good team (Chicago), they struggled. What happens is you let them get a little bit of their confidence going and then they come in the fourth quarter and now they're making shots. They're aggressive in how they play, they play hard. I thought that we got into a lot of one-on-one type stuff. We definitely didn't play strong-side, weak-side basketball how we've been playing.”

On match-ups:
“We had obvious match-ups in the last game. We just didn't do what we've been doing. We had problems guarding Nocioni. When it came down to it, we couldn't guard him. We tried to stay big and he's either taking three's or driving around us. We just couldn't contain him at all.”

Billups

“They beat us in the hustle game, hustling after rebounds and loose balls. They just played how the play; they outworked us. They drove and kicked and sliced, and they had a couple guys that had it going. The way we played, we probably should have lost by 20 or 25, but we kept fighting.”

On his and Richard Hamilton's performance:
“We tried to find someone to get it going. Rip got it going early, and I got it going a little later. If I would have been more aggressive from the beginning, we would have had a better chance tonight. Against a team like Chicago you've got to work, and the way we got outworked we would have had to play a nearly perfect game to win.”