May 2 Postgame Quotes
DETROIT PISTONS 103 VS. ORLANDO MAGIC 88
NBA PLAYOFF QUARTERFINALS GAME 6
TD WATERHOUSE CENTRE, MAY 2, 2003
ORLAND MAGIC HEAD COACH DOC RIVERS: “Well, it’s down to one game now and the team that wins moves on and the team that loses either way is going to feel like they’ve lost a golden opportunity. Being up 3-1 losing two games is very difficult for our team. Compared to the last game I thought tonight’s game we came out to play. I don’t think we played as smart or as well as we’ve played in the past. I thought this was the first game we acted young a little bit and got frustrated and they took advantage of it.”
On Chauncey’s first qtr. and three pointers: “He was making shots really. He’s taking threes, he just hasn’t made them. Chauncey’s size and his ability to just shoot over some of our small guys and he did that tonight. We put T-Mac on him in the second half and T did a terrific job. The problem there is I thought T guarding Chauncey in the third quarter was why T wasn’t very effective in the fourth quarter. It’s a hell of a dilemma for us. If you put T-Mac on him then everyone else has to lighten the load for him scoring wise. I thought Jacque and Darrell was up in to him and he still made shots.”
On Gooden being out almost nine minutes and going small and hurting Magic inside: “Actually I don’t know if it did. We went small and I bet they didn’t score seven, eight straight times down the floor and we didn’t take advantage of it. That’s one of the things I was talking about where we didn’t play extremely smart. It was a ten point game. I don’t know what the count was. I think one of our coaches had six or seven straight misses with that small line-up, but then we had five misses. And our five misses were not the shots that you would like. I thought we had the floor spread, we could have done a better job getting to the basket. I did think they were allowed to ride our guys down low a ton tonight and it wasn’t called, but I’m not going to get into that.
On Steven Hunter and the end of the half: “It was a big swing and again this is his first playoffs too. The thing with Steven right now, he’s too hard on himself. One mistake, leads to the next mistake, which leads to the next mistake. He’s a young player. I still believe he’s going to be a very good basketball player. Emotionally right now he allows mistakes to take him out of the game. But I think he’ll be fine.”
On how to get team prepared mentally going into game seven: “I don’t know yet. I asked them in the lockerroom, ‘is this over?’. I asked them a lot of questions. I think they’re going to be okay, but I think they’re going to feel horrible like their coach tonight. I’m being honest with you. You lose a 3-1 lead, though only one was at home. But you lose that home game. You feel horrible about it. It’s a golden opportunity. But the last time I checked we are alive and they are alive. Somebody’s going home on Sunday and our goal is to extend our season.
On going into a hostile environment: “Maybe that’s the environment we need. As crazy as it sounds. It felt like once we got up then expectations grew. Now we should be the team with nothing to lose again. I got to tell you that’s not what I wanted, but that’s what it is. It’s an eight seed against a one seed. It’s the one seed at home coming back with two wins and no one’s going to give the eight seed a chance. Now, obviously that’s a great rah rah speech, not the one I wanted to use, but that’s the one we have. I’ll tell you this, Detroit better play their asses off on Sunday or their going home and I believe that.
TRACY MCGRADY: “We’ve got to do it the hard way, and that’s on the road. We knew that we was in for a fight. Those guys come out in the first quarter and set the tone right away. Once again we dug ourselves a hole that we couldn’t really get out of. It was too much of Chaucney Billups, too much of Ben Wallace, too much of Rip Hamilton. And those three guys almost outscored our whole team.”
On getting out of that hole: “It really is (getting tiresome). You would think that we would be that team to come out in the first quarter with that much energy, playing smart, executing at both ends. I don’t know when we’ve going to learn. It’s tough to dig yourself out of that hole and when you get yourself close, you’ve worn yourself out, you really can’t get over that hump, and that team is just being patient, keeping their composure and they make another run and the whole game was basically playing catch-up.”
“Tonight I was a little more aggressive. Trying to get off, trying to do a lot more than I did the first two games. But right now, it’s really not working. So, you know, I’m going to have to be a little bit more selfish. Those guys have to go out and when they get the opportunity to knock down shots when the team loads up on me, then they just have to believe in themselves that they’re capable of knocking down those shots. Right now, they seem like to me a little tentative again. With this being game seven, we’ve got to lay every thing on the line, and every body’s got to step up.”
DARRELL ARMSTRONG: “We’ve got to look inside ourselves, try to find something inside ourselves, look into the mirror, and got to dig it out. Like Doc said, we can go to another level.”
“We didn’t get the calls tonight. Our guys were there to take the charge, we just wasn’t getting the calls.”
On stopping Billups and Hamilton: “We’ve got to get up a little bit more. I think they know how aggressive we’re playing and they try to play off of us. Once we step up, they’re trying to play a little more aggressive. And that’s the game plan that’s working. They have been knocking down shots and I think we’ve been giving them a little bit too much room because we know that they are scorers. The thing is, I’ve got to trust my teammates, and I do, so I’ve got to continue to push up on them and make them dribble the basketball and try to get them into that lane where they can get into a little bit trouble. Not give them the wide open shots, that’s what I gave them all night.”
SHAWN KEMP: “It’s going to be difficult. It was difficult tonight to get it in our own house so you know it’s going to be tough in theirs. We just got to be confident. We went in there and won the first game, we’ve got to go back and get the last game.”
DETROIT PISTONS HEAD COACH RICK CARLISLE: Seemed like Billups and Hamilton worked better in tandem tonight than they have in the entire series – to get you all off to a great start in the game: "Billups and Hamilton are our two leading scorers. They’ve played a lot of games together now and so they’ve had a very good year. It was important that both of those guys came up big tonight. I thought they both played well at both ends of the floor."
Down 3-1, how much were you just wanting to get a game 7 back in your house and now that you have it, do you feel like you’re in the driver’s seat? "When we got down 3-1, what we talked about was having the opportunity to come down here and get back home court advantage. A lot of teams down 3-1 don’t have the desire to do that and I really give our guys a lot of credit. They dug in. They knew this was a deep hole, but not an impossible one. All we wanted to do was give ourselves a chance. We’ve done that, but we haven’t accomplished anything yet until we walk off there Sunday with a win. That’s the only thing that matters."
Tracy McGrady said the series was over at one point, what did that do to you? "Our players are aware of McGrady’s comments after the fourth game and it’s a motivating factor when you hear something like that. Our team is a proud group. But at the same time we have a lot of respect for Orlando. They’ve played a great series. We take nothing for granted, absolutely nothing. They have arguably the best player in basketball. They’re going to come in there on Sunday and they’re going to fight as hard as they can fight as well. It’s going to be a very competitive game. There’s a lot at stake."
T-Mac says his knees have been bothering him and judging from the stats it looks like it, what did you see? "I can’t comment on the status of Tracy McGrady’s knees because I don’t know how they feel. How did he look? I thought he looked pretty good. He didn’t have a great shooting night but they got in a situation where they were going for threes late in the fourth and so he was putting some shots up under duress. To beat this team you have to defend them at a very high level. The three games we’ve won, we’ve held them in the 30% range in terms of field goal percentage. It’s not an accident. They’re a great offensive team with an unbelievable offensive player. We’re going to have to continue to do that to have a chance to win on Sunday."
Doc pulled Gooden out for nine minutes, you came back with Corliss. Was that a big stretch there early in the fourth? "A lot of credit for this win has to go to Corliss Williamson for a couple of reasons. First of all, he didn’t even get in game 5 because of match-ups and so forth. I spoke to him this morning at shoot around and told him what he’s meant to our team and to make sure that he’s ready because there’s going to be opportunities. The guy comes in cold off the bench in the second half and hit two or three huge baskets for us when we really needed it. In fact, we subbed late in the fourth quarter one time, brought him in cold a second time and he was able to deliver in the post. That type of production and professional readiness is really what this league is all about. That’s why I have such great respect for him and so does our team."
Commenting on Billups play tonight: "Billups had a great offensive game. Chauncey’s a guy that just scores the ball. He’s a guy that if he’s on the floor long enough he’s going to put the ball in the basket. Often times you can’t quite quantify the best ways to get him into the flow but he finds ways to get shots. He hit some huge ones for when we rose up in the last minute and a half was huge - over on the right side. The game was still in question at that point.
"We’re in a situation where our team is built around balance. I believe this is the first 40-point night we’ve had this year. I don’t know that we’ve had another one. We can’t depend on this kind of night. It was great but we’re going to need some other guys to step up to have an opportunity in game 7."
Your defense was questioned after you fell 3-1, has this question been answered? "Our defense should have been questioned because they were shooting 46% at that point, we were shooting 39%. I just continue to say that if you’re going to allow a team like Orlando to shoot in the high 40s you’re going to get beat. Our response in game 5 was a decisive one, our effort was great.
"Tonight, this was a slugfest type of game. It was not the prettiest but it was about survival and I give our guys a lot of credit. They did what they had to do to stay alive in this series."
BEN WALLACE: On being down 3-1 in the series: “That’s the position we put ourselves in. We dug a hole for ourselves and we could’ve felt sorry for ourselves and gave up or we could’ve came out and did what we did. Everybody thought we were ready to play and now we’re going back home for game 7.”
On when the Magic foul Ben Wallace to make him shoot free throws: “When they do that they just energize me to go on the defensive end and play a little harder. I think it makes them hurry up their offense and after they do that, they’re thinking ‘if I miss this shot I have to foul’ and they’re not really concentrating on their shot. They might say it’s a great strategy.”
On how many rebounds he will get Sunday: “However many it takes. I’m going after all of them.”
On Chauncey Billups play: “Chauncey stepped up big for us. He definitely carried this team and when he comes to play like that it’s tough to stop him. You have to pay so much attention to him that it allows everybody else to get their game off.”
CORLISS WILLIAMSON: “It was nice to get ahead especially here on their home floor because you know at some point they’re going to try and make a run and try to come back. I think we did a good job of holding onto the lead.”
On Game 7: “If we don’t win game 7, the rest of this is worthless. We have to come out and play with the same sense of urgency and the same type of intensity that we’ve had the last 2 games. Game 7 is one game. I don’t know which team has the advantage I just know that we feel pretty good right now. I’m very confident that we’re going to go home and defend our home court.”
JON BARRY: “We haven’t won it yet. We’ve just got this game 7; that’s why you’re the number one seed, you get to go back home now. Obviously we’re playing with some confidence. Going to game 7 is what you work hard in the regular season for. I know that place (Palace of Auburn Hills) is going to be jumping. I don’t know what time we’re going to play but I want all the beer vendors there early - I’ll buy the first round.”
“They’re going to come out and play hard. We haven’t done anything yet. We have another game and we’ve got to go do it. This has been great these two games, we’ve shown a lot of character and pride and got it done but if you lose game 7, these two games mean nothing.”
NBA PLAYOFF QUARTERFINALS GAME 6
TD WATERHOUSE CENTRE, MAY 2, 2003
ORLAND MAGIC HEAD COACH DOC RIVERS: “Well, it’s down to one game now and the team that wins moves on and the team that loses either way is going to feel like they’ve lost a golden opportunity. Being up 3-1 losing two games is very difficult for our team. Compared to the last game I thought tonight’s game we came out to play. I don’t think we played as smart or as well as we’ve played in the past. I thought this was the first game we acted young a little bit and got frustrated and they took advantage of it.”
On Chauncey’s first qtr. and three pointers: “He was making shots really. He’s taking threes, he just hasn’t made them. Chauncey’s size and his ability to just shoot over some of our small guys and he did that tonight. We put T-Mac on him in the second half and T did a terrific job. The problem there is I thought T guarding Chauncey in the third quarter was why T wasn’t very effective in the fourth quarter. It’s a hell of a dilemma for us. If you put T-Mac on him then everyone else has to lighten the load for him scoring wise. I thought Jacque and Darrell was up in to him and he still made shots.”
On Gooden being out almost nine minutes and going small and hurting Magic inside: “Actually I don’t know if it did. We went small and I bet they didn’t score seven, eight straight times down the floor and we didn’t take advantage of it. That’s one of the things I was talking about where we didn’t play extremely smart. It was a ten point game. I don’t know what the count was. I think one of our coaches had six or seven straight misses with that small line-up, but then we had five misses. And our five misses were not the shots that you would like. I thought we had the floor spread, we could have done a better job getting to the basket. I did think they were allowed to ride our guys down low a ton tonight and it wasn’t called, but I’m not going to get into that.
On Steven Hunter and the end of the half: “It was a big swing and again this is his first playoffs too. The thing with Steven right now, he’s too hard on himself. One mistake, leads to the next mistake, which leads to the next mistake. He’s a young player. I still believe he’s going to be a very good basketball player. Emotionally right now he allows mistakes to take him out of the game. But I think he’ll be fine.”
On how to get team prepared mentally going into game seven: “I don’t know yet. I asked them in the lockerroom, ‘is this over?’. I asked them a lot of questions. I think they’re going to be okay, but I think they’re going to feel horrible like their coach tonight. I’m being honest with you. You lose a 3-1 lead, though only one was at home. But you lose that home game. You feel horrible about it. It’s a golden opportunity. But the last time I checked we are alive and they are alive. Somebody’s going home on Sunday and our goal is to extend our season.
On going into a hostile environment: “Maybe that’s the environment we need. As crazy as it sounds. It felt like once we got up then expectations grew. Now we should be the team with nothing to lose again. I got to tell you that’s not what I wanted, but that’s what it is. It’s an eight seed against a one seed. It’s the one seed at home coming back with two wins and no one’s going to give the eight seed a chance. Now, obviously that’s a great rah rah speech, not the one I wanted to use, but that’s the one we have. I’ll tell you this, Detroit better play their asses off on Sunday or their going home and I believe that.
TRACY MCGRADY: “We’ve got to do it the hard way, and that’s on the road. We knew that we was in for a fight. Those guys come out in the first quarter and set the tone right away. Once again we dug ourselves a hole that we couldn’t really get out of. It was too much of Chaucney Billups, too much of Ben Wallace, too much of Rip Hamilton. And those three guys almost outscored our whole team.”
On getting out of that hole: “It really is (getting tiresome). You would think that we would be that team to come out in the first quarter with that much energy, playing smart, executing at both ends. I don’t know when we’ve going to learn. It’s tough to dig yourself out of that hole and when you get yourself close, you’ve worn yourself out, you really can’t get over that hump, and that team is just being patient, keeping their composure and they make another run and the whole game was basically playing catch-up.”
“Tonight I was a little more aggressive. Trying to get off, trying to do a lot more than I did the first two games. But right now, it’s really not working. So, you know, I’m going to have to be a little bit more selfish. Those guys have to go out and when they get the opportunity to knock down shots when the team loads up on me, then they just have to believe in themselves that they’re capable of knocking down those shots. Right now, they seem like to me a little tentative again. With this being game seven, we’ve got to lay every thing on the line, and every body’s got to step up.”
DARRELL ARMSTRONG: “We’ve got to look inside ourselves, try to find something inside ourselves, look into the mirror, and got to dig it out. Like Doc said, we can go to another level.”
“We didn’t get the calls tonight. Our guys were there to take the charge, we just wasn’t getting the calls.”
On stopping Billups and Hamilton: “We’ve got to get up a little bit more. I think they know how aggressive we’re playing and they try to play off of us. Once we step up, they’re trying to play a little more aggressive. And that’s the game plan that’s working. They have been knocking down shots and I think we’ve been giving them a little bit too much room because we know that they are scorers. The thing is, I’ve got to trust my teammates, and I do, so I’ve got to continue to push up on them and make them dribble the basketball and try to get them into that lane where they can get into a little bit trouble. Not give them the wide open shots, that’s what I gave them all night.”
SHAWN KEMP: “It’s going to be difficult. It was difficult tonight to get it in our own house so you know it’s going to be tough in theirs. We just got to be confident. We went in there and won the first game, we’ve got to go back and get the last game.”
DETROIT PISTONS HEAD COACH RICK CARLISLE: Seemed like Billups and Hamilton worked better in tandem tonight than they have in the entire series – to get you all off to a great start in the game: "Billups and Hamilton are our two leading scorers. They’ve played a lot of games together now and so they’ve had a very good year. It was important that both of those guys came up big tonight. I thought they both played well at both ends of the floor."
Down 3-1, how much were you just wanting to get a game 7 back in your house and now that you have it, do you feel like you’re in the driver’s seat? "When we got down 3-1, what we talked about was having the opportunity to come down here and get back home court advantage. A lot of teams down 3-1 don’t have the desire to do that and I really give our guys a lot of credit. They dug in. They knew this was a deep hole, but not an impossible one. All we wanted to do was give ourselves a chance. We’ve done that, but we haven’t accomplished anything yet until we walk off there Sunday with a win. That’s the only thing that matters."
Tracy McGrady said the series was over at one point, what did that do to you? "Our players are aware of McGrady’s comments after the fourth game and it’s a motivating factor when you hear something like that. Our team is a proud group. But at the same time we have a lot of respect for Orlando. They’ve played a great series. We take nothing for granted, absolutely nothing. They have arguably the best player in basketball. They’re going to come in there on Sunday and they’re going to fight as hard as they can fight as well. It’s going to be a very competitive game. There’s a lot at stake."
T-Mac says his knees have been bothering him and judging from the stats it looks like it, what did you see? "I can’t comment on the status of Tracy McGrady’s knees because I don’t know how they feel. How did he look? I thought he looked pretty good. He didn’t have a great shooting night but they got in a situation where they were going for threes late in the fourth and so he was putting some shots up under duress. To beat this team you have to defend them at a very high level. The three games we’ve won, we’ve held them in the 30% range in terms of field goal percentage. It’s not an accident. They’re a great offensive team with an unbelievable offensive player. We’re going to have to continue to do that to have a chance to win on Sunday."
Doc pulled Gooden out for nine minutes, you came back with Corliss. Was that a big stretch there early in the fourth? "A lot of credit for this win has to go to Corliss Williamson for a couple of reasons. First of all, he didn’t even get in game 5 because of match-ups and so forth. I spoke to him this morning at shoot around and told him what he’s meant to our team and to make sure that he’s ready because there’s going to be opportunities. The guy comes in cold off the bench in the second half and hit two or three huge baskets for us when we really needed it. In fact, we subbed late in the fourth quarter one time, brought him in cold a second time and he was able to deliver in the post. That type of production and professional readiness is really what this league is all about. That’s why I have such great respect for him and so does our team."
Commenting on Billups play tonight: "Billups had a great offensive game. Chauncey’s a guy that just scores the ball. He’s a guy that if he’s on the floor long enough he’s going to put the ball in the basket. Often times you can’t quite quantify the best ways to get him into the flow but he finds ways to get shots. He hit some huge ones for when we rose up in the last minute and a half was huge - over on the right side. The game was still in question at that point.
"We’re in a situation where our team is built around balance. I believe this is the first 40-point night we’ve had this year. I don’t know that we’ve had another one. We can’t depend on this kind of night. It was great but we’re going to need some other guys to step up to have an opportunity in game 7."
Your defense was questioned after you fell 3-1, has this question been answered? "Our defense should have been questioned because they were shooting 46% at that point, we were shooting 39%. I just continue to say that if you’re going to allow a team like Orlando to shoot in the high 40s you’re going to get beat. Our response in game 5 was a decisive one, our effort was great.
"Tonight, this was a slugfest type of game. It was not the prettiest but it was about survival and I give our guys a lot of credit. They did what they had to do to stay alive in this series."
BEN WALLACE: On being down 3-1 in the series: “That’s the position we put ourselves in. We dug a hole for ourselves and we could’ve felt sorry for ourselves and gave up or we could’ve came out and did what we did. Everybody thought we were ready to play and now we’re going back home for game 7.”
On when the Magic foul Ben Wallace to make him shoot free throws: “When they do that they just energize me to go on the defensive end and play a little harder. I think it makes them hurry up their offense and after they do that, they’re thinking ‘if I miss this shot I have to foul’ and they’re not really concentrating on their shot. They might say it’s a great strategy.”
On how many rebounds he will get Sunday: “However many it takes. I’m going after all of them.”
On Chauncey Billups play: “Chauncey stepped up big for us. He definitely carried this team and when he comes to play like that it’s tough to stop him. You have to pay so much attention to him that it allows everybody else to get their game off.”
CORLISS WILLIAMSON: “It was nice to get ahead especially here on their home floor because you know at some point they’re going to try and make a run and try to come back. I think we did a good job of holding onto the lead.”
On Game 7: “If we don’t win game 7, the rest of this is worthless. We have to come out and play with the same sense of urgency and the same type of intensity that we’ve had the last 2 games. Game 7 is one game. I don’t know which team has the advantage I just know that we feel pretty good right now. I’m very confident that we’re going to go home and defend our home court.”
JON BARRY: “We haven’t won it yet. We’ve just got this game 7; that’s why you’re the number one seed, you get to go back home now. Obviously we’re playing with some confidence. Going to game 7 is what you work hard in the regular season for. I know that place (Palace of Auburn Hills) is going to be jumping. I don’t know what time we’re going to play but I want all the beer vendors there early - I’ll buy the first round.”
“They’re going to come out and play hard. We haven’t done anything yet. We have another game and we’ve got to go do it. This has been great these two games, we’ve shown a lot of character and pride and got it done but if you lose game 7, these two games mean nothing.”
