Postgame Quotes - January 10, 2011

On the game: “It was a tale of two halves. We did a nice job offensively in the first half. We also forced missed shots and got the rebounds. In the 3rd quarter, they went on a spurt and we just couldn't control it. If we could have generated anything offensively, we would have been in this. We had a a good pace and took advantage of their mistakes but in the 2nd half we couldn't get anything from that. Their team capitalized on our mistakes.”

On Derrick Rose: “Derrick Rose is an outstanding basketball player. I enjoy everything about him. Not only is he gifted as a player both offensively and defensively, but he has a passion for the game. His body language for the entire game was the same whether they were ahead or behind. That is the mark of a great one.”

“Offensively we didn't start well in the 2nd half. I missed some shots I would normally make starting the 3rd. We had great looks in the 3rd quarter. We just missed some shots. Once we missed some shots, it effects us on the defensive end. That was the case tonight. With a guy like Derrick Rose, when he's getting the ball to guys in the 1st half, you know what he's going to do in the 2nd half. So you have to be prepared for it and I don't think we were.”

On Derrick Rose: “From an athletic standpoint and a strength standpoint, you can see what he's capable of doing. When he comes off those pick and rolls, if you have one glitch on defense, you have either 2 points or a foul or something. We should have done a better job of trapping him before he got going.”

On the 2nd half: “We got away from the things we did in the first half, moving the ball, rotating defensively. We kind of had Derrick contained a little bit but we got away from that. We let him get going. Boozer got going. We just couldn't slow them down.”

On Derrick Rose: “He's definitely playing at a high level. He's playing with a great deal of confidence. As he goes, the team goes.”

On their bench: “We've been doing a good job. The guys on the 2nd unit have figured it our and are playing extremely hard.”

On the defensive breakdown. The first quarter was just as bad as the second quarter. We had a number of match up problems because of size. I thought we were low energy on both ends. The third quarter we came out and energy was very, very good on both ends.

On resting Derrick. I was mostly concerned about the match ups because of what happened in the second quarter.

On Luol Deng. He's had a terrific season so far. He guarded a number of guys and has done a terrific job on individual defense and team defense as well.

More on Rose. His offense – he's obviously a spectacular players. But what impresses me is his improvement on defense, that's what's impressive. I thought he came out in the third quarter with a lot of agressivenes. He's hard to guard when he plays like that.

Should Rose be the starting point guard on the All-Star team with how he's been playing? I don't get wrapped up in that, I like the way he's been playing for us. What I admire about him is that he gets as much joy out of watching his teammates play well as he does himself. That's what makes him so special.

On their play in the second half. We got our offense going from our defense, we got stops and we were able to get out and run. In the first half we really didn't get those opportunities because our defense wasn't that good.

Was Thibs upset at halftime? He really wasn't. Everyone knew what we had to do. He didn't really have to say much, we all kind of knew we had no energy in the first half. As a team we just all decided to come out in the second half and really commit to our defense and that made a difference.

On winning games at home. Like I said, you've got to have the mindset that every game you go into you are going to win, home or away. We're doing well at home. We felt like we let a couple of games slip, we're just trying to get back to that winning streak. That's what good teams do. We didn't want to let that losing streak become a habit.

On Ronnie Brewer's play. He's been playing great. He's been coming in and picking us up defensively, we then get out running. He's been shooting the ball well too. He's been doing a good job.

On some recent tough starts to games. Yeah, we're definitely concerned about that but a win is a win in this league no matter what it is. A game-winning shot, a buzzer beater, whatever. You can't take away a win.

On their second half defense. Yeah, we finally played defense. In the first half, they were getting everything they wanted driving to the hole, getting to the line. We were following them. In the second half, we just made sure we got in their way. When we were being aggressive and pressing them up and down the court. We were also rebounding the ball and that was huge.

On taking over the game in the third quarter. Just doing anything to get my team a win, that's about it. I started scoring the ball, they started double teaming and that's when I started passing.

On his alley oop dunk from Ronnie Brewer. Running on the break I thought he was going to throw it up before that but it took him a while, he took an extra dribble. He threw it up and I was just right there, actually I felt like I was coming down and I just dunked it.

It's cool to watch, is it cool to do? It's probably cool to watch, I don't even know what happened. I've got to see it for myself. I'm just happy that the fans liked it and that we won this game.