Postgame Quotes: Suns @ Celtics, 11/6/2009

“We’re pretty good offensively, and as long as we can just limit our turnovers we feel pretty good about our chances offensively. I like the fact that the first things our guys said when we went into the locker room was that we won it with our defense again, and we really did win it with our defense.”

“I think our bench has played great, and everybody up here knows Jared Dudley. I’ll tell you, that guy is a coach’s dream. He’s a coach’s dream. We never even, I don’t even know what he did, because we never look at the stat sheet with him. But he always comes up with a big defensive play, with a big steal. He’s really kind of got the 2nd unit, he’s the one that’s kind of created the identity of the 2nd unit…Our guys laugh at him all the time, cause when he gets a dunk in practice everybody is like ooooh. He is not the world’s greatest athlete, let’s put it that way. But he’s probably our smartest player really, I don’t know if I’ve ever had a player that was as intelligent as he is. He just knows angles and he plays every play like it’s the last play of the game.”

Re How do you guys use this as a measuring stick? “I guess it just proves that we should have high expectations and we should continue to work hard and if we play hard – I think that’s the biggest thing. We really competed and we’re gritty and we played hard tonight, and that’s the key to winning in a building like this against a team like that.”

Re Coach pleased because [the Suns] won this with their defense “We definitely scored enough points to win but I thought we got enough stops to win the game, and when it counted, I thought our defense was good.

Re Guarding Rajon Rondo vs. playing against other guards. “Well he’s one of the elite guards in the league now. He’s talent that does a lot of things. He rebounds, passes, gets steals and on any given night can score. He’s a terrific player with a great all court game.”

Re What does the 1st 7 games show you? “What it showed us is that we got off to a great start. It’s a long season. We don’t want to get too ahead of our self but I think for the most part, we’re playing well, we’re confident. We just got to keep it going.”

Re Did you notice maturity in [Kendrick] Perkins game? “To be honest with you? No. I mean, he’s a solid player out there. He loves to get physical. He’s aggressive. He’s keeps a lot of confrontation going. We try to play smart basketball. From my standpoint, we try to stay out of the confrontation – really just go out and execute our plays offensively and defensively. But seems sometimes, he wants to keep it up. He’s always mean. Always mad. He don’t never have fun out there. He needs to learn how to have fun on the basketball court and just enjoy his life – enjoy the game.”

Re Pierce thought the team was a step slow: “Yeah, we were. I mean, we’re tired right now, but, shoot, they are too. They’ve been on the road for I don’t know how long. But we’ve got one more in this stretch of 8 of 12. You know, 8 games in 12 days to start the season is brutal. But everybody’s going to go through this stretch at some point; we just happen to go through it early. And we knew when we looked at the schedule that this is going to be a tough stretch of games, and let’s see how many games we can squeeze out and win.”

Re is it easier after a loss to talk about needing to improve: “Well it is’ it’s easier for them to believe you after an ‘L.’ You know, I don’t know sometimes if they believe you after a win. But we have a pretty mature team. They know that because of the amount of games that we’ve had, it’s impossible to practice. They can see the slippage. We’ve showed it on film. We talked about it; the last three games it’s all we’ve been talking about. But it’s tough to do something about it until you can get some real practice time. And we’ll get that on Monday. You know, we still got tomorrow to play and then we finally get a day off of full rest, and then we can get to building. But we’ve got to take care of the game tomorrow.”

Re Suns making plays after his rotations: “Yeah, I thought they just moved the ball well. That’s what they do. I mean, (Steve) Nash is such a great player. I thought he controlled the game for the most part. It’s funny, his numbers are good but his game was much better. I’ve got to tell you, I thought – besides him, and (Jason) Richardson just kicked our butt; he loves us – but I thought the two most important guys on the floor tonight was (Louis) Armundson and (Jared) Dudley. I thought those two guys’ effort, energy, defensive denials, keeping the ball alive – I thought those two guys set the entire tone for the game. When they came in the game, I thought the game changed. And, hell, it’s rare when I’ll say ‘Keep Grant Hill on the floor,’ but we wanted him on the floor instead of Dudley, the way Dudley was playing. He was just a thorn in our butt. I mean, the biggest, one of their biggest plays is that back-cut down the stretch. But he did it all game. He was absolutely fantastic tonight. I thought Dudley was – him and Amundson – I thought those two were fantastic.”

Re 6-0 and rest of season: “Well, it is a long way to go, but don’t take anything from what we’ve done either. We’ve created that 6-0, just like we lost tonight. It’s what it is, but we fought hard for those wins just like we fought hard tonight. Unfortunately, it didn’t come out our way, but the effort is there and I say work in progress. You know, guys getting terminology down, flow---we’re still understanding. There’s times when I haven’t even played with Marquis [Daniels] and Eddie [House] and so has Paul [Pierce]. Different line ups, different match-ups, you know it’s going to be like that and it’s going to be a while before that whole chemistry, that flow comes through. It is a work in process. All in all when we’re on the floor, whoever’s on the floor, we’re going hard trying to win the game and playing the right way. So it’s in the right direction.”

Re shots made: “I really think we got good shots, layups at the rim, some looks that we got from three, I think, were pretty open that we make. You know, it’s a long season. Throughout the course I think we’ll make more than we miss. At the end of the night I think we hang our head on the defense. We see a team shot 54 percent from three, 50 percent from the field, then that’s what you kind of point your finger at.”

Re Do you feel like you missed a couple lay-ups in the first half?-“Well, yea, you look at both sides. I think the offense missed a lot of easy possessions where we should have scored, then obviously it lead to them running transitions so they play hand in hand.”

Re How do you put this behind you with another game coming up tomorrow- well it sucks, if we were in the NFL right now we’d have to wait a whole week so we like the position we’re in, we get a chance to go out and correct our mistakes.”

Re Could you guys have played better defensively?-Yea, we could’ve, it was defensive things that we were thinking about doing but we just didn’t do. They took advantage of some of it but I mean we tip our hats off to them, they played a good game