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PLAYER OF THE GAME

Chauncey Billups Points: 18 FTM-A: 7-7 Assists: 8 Steals: 2 Minutes: 40

When did Tayshaun Prince officially become the go to guy every time you need a basket?
He's been like that probably three weeks after the All Star Break. He's been a guy that we've gone to. The thing with Tay, he has the ability to make good plays, make smart decisions. He doesn't force things, he is a guy that's long. He usually has a mismatch and makes good basketball decisions. Whether he's shooting the basketball, whether he's making the play for somebody else, whether he's getting the offensive rebounds, everyone knows that he's been a great defender. The one guy that didn't make the All Star Team is the one guy that's definitely playing like an all star, no question, since the break.

Can you talk about what happened? They scored 17 points the final 1:46, a lot of uncharacteristic play turnovers :
It was like watching Miami the other night against us. What happens so many times, you get near the end of the game, you start playing not to lose instead of playing to win, so you get not aggressive, you don't make concentrated decisions, and you want you wait for that clock to keep on rolling for the game to end, so you lose some of your concepts that you wanted to stay with.

There's no question that we did not end the game how we would like to end the game, but I thought overall we have to look at it as I said prior to, when you're not playing very well, you don't all of a sudden play well. I thought we showed signs these last couple games in areas where we were a little bit better, and I thought we did some things better tonight overall, and we got a little bit better than we were the last game. Now we're going to have to make another jump because it's going to be extremely difficult, of course, down in Miami.

Tayshaun talked about how Ben's energy early kind of drove the whole thing. Do you think Ben plays with more energy when he gets involved offensively early like he did tonight?
Yeah, I mean, he plays with energy. I think there's no question, though, that when he feels that he's more a part of it, he's going to be more energized. We used him more offensively and he helped us, got us off to a good start. We haven't used him lately, didn't make some of the same plays to get him the ball and stuff, but he still was involved and not standing on the weak side where they couldn't guard him. I think as I told our guys prior to the game, we needed to get back to having an equal opportunity offense, where it wasn't just geared towards one individual, and if people were open we had to pass them the ball and trust those guys to make decisions. Ben made good decisions, not only scoring wise but he had some great passes, great back door passes to Rip and did a great job.

You went to your bench a little bit more early on than you normally do. Talk about the philosophy behind that and your thoughts on what you got from those guys?
I thought Delfino, he's played pretty well against Miami because he's got good size, good quickness, can put the ball on the floor, and we wanted to be in a situation where we could give Tay an early rest and bring him back and give him an opportunity at mismatches when we had him back on the floor. We went to him, used Dale Davis, would have liked to use Dyess a little more but didn't.

The bench didn't score a lot but they did a lot of other things. They kept us in there and kept us in the game and made overall pretty good basketball decisions, which I think is important. I think when you go to your bench, you want to make sure there's still atune to what you're trying to do. So there's no question they helped.

Did you see those hockey passes you were talking about the other day?
Yeah, I thought we saw some. I thought we moved the ball a lot better. We made some two, three pass shots coming out of it. The first quarter we played extremely well offensively. Like I said, I think you start getting back and you start playing better. First of all, it comes in short stints and eventually it comes in longer stints. I thought we made good decisions. We got a little bit worn at the end. They scored a lot of points in a short period of time, and part of it was they got extremely aggressive and we got passive. I thought we were a little bit tired and got a little careless. I thought we were atune and knew where to attack, and the guys executed what we were trying to implement.

They didn't get nearly as much production from their so called role players tonight. Pat Riley said he thought that was more a case of them missing good looks than anything. Did you guys do something to try to take that away, would you agree with him?
I thought it was a combination. I thought they missed some open looks, but I also thought that we what happens sometimes, if you don't give the role players easy buckets, those open looks become a lot tougher to make. It's when they can get going off lay ups, get going in transition that they get their adrenaline, get their confidence going and those shots become a lot easier to make. It's when you haven't made a shot in a while and the ball is passed around to you and the shot clock is winding down and you've got to make a shot, sometimes those are tougher shots to make. I think it was a combination. Basically we made an adjustment. We made a conscious effort to try to choke off some of their role type players and the adjustment paid off.

In the last five seconds, the only way you could get tied is if somebody tried a frantic 3 and got fouled, so what was your thought when you saw Lindsey going for the ball?
He was going as far as down low. I didn't think he was going to foul him, so I wasn't that concerned.

On using Ben Wallace to pick and roll:
"That was one of the things we talked about and wanted to do get Ben (Wallace) as many pick and rolls as possible and make shots out of it. Get out there on the floor a little bit and just try to run them down a little bit."

On the series so far:
"We came in, took care of business. It's one to one. They came up here and did what they wanted to do and steal one game. Now it's our turn to go down there and try to do the same."

On getting the day off yesterday:
"A lot man, a lot, if you looked and seen we had a little more pop in our legs tonight. Some of those other shots that were front rimming the other day some of them went, some of them still didn't. We'll take advantage of getting another one tomorrow and get ready for Saturday."

On having fun on the court:
"Yeah, no doubt, we play our style and do what we like to do we have a lot of fun out there and today it was a fun game."

On how the series feels now:
"It's just tied up, just like I was saying the other day. When you've got two great teams like this and you get to this point in the season, home court is not as big as it would be in the first round. You even look at the other series Phoenix went in there and is winning. When you get to this stage and have two great teams, both teams are great at home and great on the road. So it's our turn to try and go down there and take another one."

How aware were you through the first nine minutes of the fourth quarter that you scored every one of the team's points, and what makes you such a tough match up?
I didn't know that, but I think whenever the team goes on a drought or we do some things that as far as taking jump shots or kind of getting out of sync a little bit, I try to tell Chauncey or the coach to let me try to get something to block or get something going to the basket or to get to the foul line, something like that. I've just been in a situation where I've been getting some offensive rebounds and doing the little things to try to get my game going a little bit, and it's been helpful.

What happened on that play at the end? It looked like you were trying to call time out and didn't get it.
Yeah, I was calling time out. I think from Dick's point of view, I mean, he didn't tell me this, but I think he was so aware of what was going on in bounds that he wasn't paying attention to me. When I called time out, he wasn't looking nowhere in my area, he was so worried about what was going on in the inside, and I think at that point that's got to be the other ref's responsibility if they see a foul. More importantly, you've got to be in a situation where you can call time out.

Did he say something to you after the game?
He said something to me. I was pretty upset about it, but things happen. I just move on.

The way it ended and them scoring 17 points, does that take away anything that you might have built up through the first three plus quarters?
I think it can, but hopefully it won't, and hopefully we just build on what we did before that happened. They did a good job of denying the ball, not giving me the opportunity to find an open man. I think once Rasheed found out, they put me in a tough situation throwing the ball in bounds because we went small, and usually if I get caught in a bad situation, Rasheed can run to the ball and I can just throw it up. Once he fouled out I was in a tough situation, but things happen.

Tonight you were especially effective tapping in your own rebounds, offensive rebounds. What was going on there that made that work for you?
I kind of felt my shots being short a little bit when I was in the paint area, so I think I'm a pretty quick second jumper. More importantly just using my length. It was a situation that I knew my shots were shot, so if you know they're short you've got to be in a situation to go get the ball, just a perfect situation coming right back into my hands. Just being aggressive, and if the shots weren't falling I was just trying to give myself and my teammates extra opportunities.

Ben, at one point early in the game you had more points than the entire Miami Heat squad. Was there an emphasis coming into this game to get you going a little bit more often?
We wanted to run Shaq into pick and rolls, force him to guard the pick and rolls. I was trying to slip out the pick and roll to the basket. The team did a great job of finding me at the basket.

You're known for your defense, but it seems sometimes you get it going defensively more when you're involved offensively early in games. Is there anything where the offense actually feeds the defense?
No, not really. You know, I think we need everybody on the offensive end to be active, get everybody involved, force everybody to play honest on the defensive end. I think we're a team like that. We come down and hold the ball to one side and don't get the ball moving. A lot of teams make it tough for us on the defensive end and force bad shots on the other end.

Can you tell me, you guys let them back into the game at the end of the game. Does it concern you that you guys let them back in?
You know, I would like to see us finish the game the way we started, but we know guys are going to keep playing until the very end. They made some tough shots down the end. We missed some free throws. We had an unforced situation with the time out at the end. It was a dogfight. We'll go back and try to correct those things.

How important was Rip's 21 points in the first half? Seemed like he was carrying you guys?
Rip did a great job. Coming off the screen, forcing Dwyane Wade and those guys to run behind him, he was making shots for us. He was big in the first half and he got us off to a great start.

You just referenced the start. How much of a point of emphasis was that and how much did you think it set a tone compared to the other night?
You know, we came out and started the game well, got the ball moving. We forced the team to play the way we like to play. Any time we can take the tempo of the game, I like our chances.

Would you talk about your offense in that first quarter in particular. I know a lot of people who were coming out and seeing the Pistons for the first time don't know that you were once an offensive player and scored points. How important is that for you to feel in the flow of the game and score some points? How much does it affect your performance up and down?
I think it weighs on the defense, still allowing teams to come down and zone in on what we're doing. We've got everybody involved, now you've got to play honest and coming down at us trying to run off offense 4 against 5.

When I get involved in offense, it forces the team to keep a guy on me and not allow him to roll me around. It opens up things for my teammates. I thought Rip and Chauncey made a couple passes that got me some lay ups, and I was able to get good looks.

The team had a lot more energy today and moved better. Last game probably tired legs were in the way. How important was it, number one, not to have worked out the last couple of days or not had a full practice, and number two, about the substitutions, getting more rest for the starters, how important was that?
I think that plays a part in it, but I think for the most port, our focus was a little bit better tonight. I think the last game we were a little bit relaxed and didn't play the way we were capable of playing. Everybody was focused, everybody was on the same page. We had guys coming off the bench, had their heads in the game right away, were able to come out there and contribute. Once we play like that as a team, we're tough to beat.

Your bench throughout the playoffs and throughout the regular season was sort of criticized for not producing. Talk about what this bench means to you guys when they get opportunities to play like they did tonight?
Our bench means a lot to us. Our bench has been there for us the whole season, and when those guys come off the bench and play well, it moves the energy toward the starters, so now the guys in the starting lineup can relax and cheer for the guys on the floor knows that those guys are going to go out and perform and you don't have to put pressure on yourself to try and save the game.

You guys got a lot of bad cuts tonight for layups. Was Miami overplaying in any way or was it better execution for you guys?
I think it was better execution. I think early we was able to knock down some jump shots. I know Rip knocked down a couple shots. Once you make a couple shots, forces guys to play honest, and they got up and pressured up and we was looking for the back door cut. Rip was able to break away a couple times and get a couple lay ups and got everything we wanted on the offensive end, made shots and did take the tempo of the game. When we play like that, man, it's good basketball, fun to play, and everybody gets involved, and that's the type of basketball we love to play.

Talk a little bit about the challenges of dealing with Shaq throughout the game defending against him and playing at the other end against him, as well :
You know, Shaq presents a lot of different challenges. I got a busted lip, a black eye, but he's just about going out there, trying to do what he can do to help the team win, try and stay in front of him, make him shoot over the top and not allow him to get too many dunks.

On offense:
"I think what we tried to do was be aggressive early. Get the team going early. Try to move, cut and get easy baskets. Try to find open guys. I think that carried over to the second half. Chaunce (Chauncey Billups) picked it up. Tay (Tayshaun Prince) picked it up. It was a total team effort."

On Ben Wallace’s play:
"Ben was great. I think that when he made cuts Chauncey gave him the ball when we needed to pass him the ball. We need to make Ben an offensive threat out there. Sometimes they don't guard him and things like that."

On Heat’s run at the end of the game:
"It was one of those crazy things. Luckily we got out with the win. We've got to concentrate a little bit more. I think that the game wasn't over yet and they made a little run."

On defending Dwyane Wade:
"We just try to contain him early. He will score. He's a scorer. You know they're going to keep going to him until he makes some baskets. You try to switch it up on him."

On the game:
"It was fun. It's one-one. Now our job is to try go down there and get one and hopefully do it. We just have to take it one game at a time."

On playing in an opponent’s building:
"It's always exciting because it's you against the world."

On containing the rest of the Miami Heat:
"I think in game one they killed us. GP (Gary Payton) had a great game. Jason Williams had a great game. Antoine Walker had a great game. We try to limit all of them from all having big games and I think tonight we just did a better job at it." another one."

Do you feel like the start of both halves you gave up a little too much and you were chasing the whole time?
Just like the beginning for us the other night. We got off to 11- 0 lead and then 18 to 6 and we were down 18 to 6 to start the game and 25- 12 in the quarter. It was really a game of skirmish. When they were playing their best basketball for three, four, five minutes in some skirmish, they were really good at it. There were a few of those for us, but there weren't enough.

We didn't have enough good, sustained periods of basketball where we could really get back into the game. We had some opportunities and we cut it, I think, just before the half we cut it to three or four points, and they got a couple plays right at the end of the half to put them up 11.

Then going into the fourth quarter they made a couple of plays that could have got us to 3. At 77- 71 we had a wide open three and missed it. When they're playing very good in spurts, then it's going to be hard to beat them.

Can you talk about the fact that you guys were getting blown up for so long but were resilient and able to build on that going back to Miami?
It means something but it doesn't. It means something, the fact that we hung in there and could have got lucky actually. I mean, Chauncey misses one, which I don't think he's ever missed one at the end when it counted, but you just never know what could have happened. If we could have made one more steal we hung in there and had a shot at it, but when they opened the lead to 18 points it was pretty hard for us to come back.

One of the keys to Game 1 was you got a lot from people other than Shaq and Dwyane. Pistons seemed to take a lot of that away tonight. Was it something they were doing?
I'm not so sure that's the case. We were 2 for 12, threes from two of our starters, and some nights they go in and they don't. The other night Chauncey and Rip and Tayshaun and Rasheed were all not shooting the ball well. You have those nights when you have three or four guys that you count on that don't shoot it well, then you're going to be in trouble, and we had that tonight. We didn't have everybody playing the game well, playing at a high level, and until I really look at the film I think we got some good looks. The same thing that Flip said the other night, you know, they had a lot of good looks. I think when you take a look at the film, you say, wow, we had the same looks we had the other night, but they were a little too committed tonight. They played too well.

Two things: You shut out virtually everybody offensively on Detroit the first nine minutes of the fourth except Tayshaun. What's challenging about him as a match up, and how do you score 17 points in the last 1:40?
Is that what we did? We scored 17 points the last 1:40?

Something like that.
We have to go to that offense (laughter). I'm going to that offense at the beginning of the game and find out exactly what we were doing to score 17 points. It was like we did the other night. When you've got this kind of a lead I don't want to be flip about this thing, we just got beat, but you have a tendency to wait for the game to end, which is what Detroit did, let the clock run out, and we're still trying to get back and get lucky, and that's the same thing that happened to us the other night, they kept getting layup after layup after layup.

On Tayshaun Prince :
He's tough. He's a very unorthodox player, but he's very, very gifted and very talented. Of all the players in the league that have come a long way because of his length and the fact that he can shoot the ball, and he's a great offensive rebounder, watching him play in the playoffs, he made a lot of the biggest plays that this team is seeing. We've got to find an answer for him.

Last game you got great production from Walker, from Williams and from Payton, and tonight it wasn't there. Do you think you have to have production from those three in order to win this series?
Well, you've got to have I think four or five guys play well, yeah. You've got to have four or five guys that play well. It doesn't necessarily mean they have to score a lot of points, but you have to have four or five guys to play well and score and contribute. We didn't get that tonight, and I hope that we get it at home.

How big or important do you think Rasheed's third quarter was? He got off a little bit, he was able to hit a couple threes?
They ran a different pick and roll scheme in the first quarter, and then he hit a couple on Zo, I put Zo in trying to go big a little bit, but he's making them. When he's making them from 27 feet or 28 feet, that's a long way to close out. So some nights he has the ability to do that. Try to convince your players, look, you've got to close all the way out to 28, 29 feet, you've got to close all the way out to his chest, you put a lot of attention on Chauncey Billups and make sure he's not turning the corner and you're trying to get back to him. He came back strong, he made some big hoops for them.

On a difficult game:
"It wasn't really difficult, we just were a step slow. We just have to regroup. We know that they're the best team in the East and we knew they were going to regroup and play, we were just a step slow. We started to pick it up in the end and still had a couple chances to win, but we had too many turnovers and we were not playing smarter. We just got to get back to getting inside and outside."

On turnovers and not making shots:
"I think we need to focus on getting it inside. We took way too many jump shots tonight. But defense wins games. We let them get what they wanted, especially a lot of lay-ups in that first half. With that you don't get many chances to win. We feel good about that and just have to take of work at home."

On last minute comeback:
"We had many chances their get the win. We cut the lead and then we were just playing silly most of the game and then got serious with like four minutes to go. But we just dug too deep of a hole. But we'll be okay we just have to regroup and go home."

On satisfied with the split:
"Not really. We just need to take care of business. We have two games and home and we have to get both of those of those games and we just need to do things right against a great Pistons team."

On Detroit’s play:
"They played a lot better. They played with a lot of energy. But I think we have to come out better. We were a step slow in the first half on our rotations and stuff like that. We were just trying to make jump shots and that's not our game. We have to get inside and send it back out."

Dwyane, how do you score 17 points in 1:46?
We did that? Desperate, very desperate. We should have played that way from the beginning of the half when we was down. But, you know, resilient team. Always going to fight. That's how it's going to be, both teams are going to do that.

In Game 1, you talked about one of the keys being that a lot of other guys on your team stepped up other than you and Shaq. You didn't seem to get that tonight. Did they do something to take it away from those guys?
No. I mean, guys had shots. Unfortunately they didn't go down. But I think we still got a lot of things that we wanted. But the problem to us wasn't offensive. We got what we wanted offensively, even though they did turn the pressure up a little bit, we still got offensively what we wanted, but it was defensively early on. The way we started the night, they were making a lot of shots early on and got them into a groove. That was a big difference in the game. Then the third quarter they got off to a big lead, but we were still there and had an opportunity.

A lot of turnovers tonight. Was it what they were doing or something where you guys might have been out of sync tonight?
I don't know. There was a couple of them where we kind of rushed the passes. They did a good job with pressure. I'm not like them, I'm going to give them credit. They did a good job of that. We've got to do a better job taking care of the ball.

Don't you think they give you credit when you play better and you win?
No. We don't get credit. They was tired. That's what y'all said. That's why we won the first game. We won one, go back to Miami Game 3, come out with a lot of intensity.

I'm sure you guys talked in the locker room before the game about coming out with intensity tonight. What happened when you guys got out on the floor?
Like I said, they came out aggressive, but we came out and missed shots and they came out and made shots. That's a big difference in any ballgame, but we still took everything that they threw at us and we still came back, kept fighting, kept fighting, but they were the better team tonight, no way to get around that.

You talked yesterday at practice about expecting them to be more aggressive against you personally and they seemed to be that way tonight. Did you notice that especially early on?
When we come up the court and Rip doing that bumping stuff, that's the only thing I seen. Maybe I'll try it and see if I can get away with it. Besides that, it was a normal game. For me I still got a chance to penetrate and pass the ball to my guys, and I still got some shots that I wanted. I took some shots, made 50 percent of them. Besides me coming up the court and him bumping me, wasn't nothing different.

There's no moral victory, of course, but the way you close out this game, is there any momentum to be gleaned, to take into Saturday?
No, I mean, the only thing that you can take from it is we've got to have that same aggressiveness. We've got to have that same want throughout the game. You can't do it against a Detroit team, dig yourself into a hole because this team will not beat themselves; you have to beat them. Have that same resilience that we had at the end of the game in Game 3. That's it.

On his game:
“We dug ourselves a hole at the beginning of the game. It was a vice-versa game from Game 1. We missed a lot of shots like they did in the first game and they made baskets and they got an early lead. It was too late. We turned the ball over a lot and we hurt ourselves a lot. That’s just something that happened. It was just a repeat of the first game but it was on their side this time. We’ve just got to go back to Game 3 and not turn the ball over and play well.”

On whether or not they were hoping for a miracle finish:
“Well, anything can happen in basketball, so we were just hustling, trying to make that happen. We got a couple turnovers, got a five-second violation, made a big three – Dwyane did…. We just came up short.”

On regrouping for Game 3:
“There won’t be any regrouping, we’re just going to go to practice tomorrow. We missed shots – that’s just the way it is, that’s the way the game goes. We turned the ball over a lot and they got rebounds. We have to focus in on those three key areas of the game and I think we’ll be ok.”

On whether or not they’re disappointed in going 1-1 in Detroit:
“We wanted to go 2-0. Anybody would want to go up 2-0 when you’re on somebody else’s floor. We’re ok. We’re still tied. We started the series the same way, tied up, and now we’ve just got to go home and try to protect home court. If we can get two at home, we’re going to be fine, but we’ve got to go in and try to get Game 3 first. That’s what we’re focusing on.”