Ben Wallace Quotes (84 Quotes)

Flip allows you to go out there and play. You know if you make mistakes, he'll allow you to play through it. Coach Brown, you know, he likes to coach, pretty much every possession if he can. That's his passion he loves to coach.

I thought they were the more poised team down the stretch. I thought we maybe lined up too many threes down the stretch and tried to force the outcome instead of doing what we usually do.

When we play like we did today, good things happen. When we play like that, we make the game look easy.

I think Dice is one of those that last year probably suffered the most. After the loss, he was really down. He really wanted it. We did what we could do to try to win it, so this year we're going to go out there knowing how he felt last year after losing the championship.

We just wanted to come out with a lot of energy early in the game and take control of the game and we were able to do that. That was our game plan and we had good success doing it.

You've just got to wait and see how it plays out. If it comes together like they put it down on paper it'll be a great. But if not, it might fall apart.

Team basketball is a lost art nowadays, but it's always going to win. You can win in the regular season, but if you don't play together as a team it's going to be tough to win in the playoffs teams. And I think now teams are starting to recognize that.

I guess you could say we usually learn our lessons and not come out the next game and make the same mistakes.

They're a struggling team right now, trying to find their identity. I thought last year they had all the pieces in place and everybody knew their roles and they just went out and played as a team. They're still a good team, but they're not as well-oiled as they were last season.

We had a little more energy because we were at home. It's tough to play away from home on Christmas.

It didn't matter, they were still going to lose. As long as we win the game, I am good. I don't have so much pride that I can't see the big picture.

He didn't cut it, did he Good. I like that hair. I'm rolling with him.

All it takes is for guys to come out and make a couple shots, and you find yourself on the losing end. We know what teams are capable of doing.

We don't care about the numbers. We just want to add them up at the end of the season and come up with home-court advantage.

Every time I step out onto the floor, there's no question why I'm out there. I play to win. I don't want to settle for being a good team. I want to reach greatness. None of this was ever given to me. I had to work for everything that I've got. I continue to work, and I continue to come out and try to improve on my game, night in and night out.

And a stretch, a bit, is sometimes all a great player needs. The complementary players, the guys like Ginobili and Robert Horry (15 points) follow the star, particularly in the NBA. The numbers weren't as good as they have been, but they also don't reflect the effort, the control of the game, specifically in the third quarter when it looked like Detroit was about to pull away and Gregg Popovich had to burn a timeout to plot and settle his team. He put his team on his shoulders and carried them, ... which is what the great players do.

What we focus on every night is going out there and making this thing work and finding ways to win games.

This is one of those situations where if you don't react the way you react, there's no telling what might have happened. Years from now you'll still be kicking yourself in the butt because you didn't react.

It says a lot about the character of the guys. All we ask of everybody is to give what you have every night.

Sometimes, when you have a new coach, a new system, a new group of guys, it takes time to jell together, ... But there's no doubt in my mind that we're eventually going to come together as a team and make that title run.

We set out from the beginning of the season to try and win every game. It's not about who we're playing, it's about going out there and taking care of our business.

We've been chased for a long time, so it doesn't change for us. We've still got to come out and do what we do. We've been here before, we know what type of situations we've been in and we know what type of beast the playoffs bring. You've got to be prepared for everything.

It was one of those nights where I wanted to test everything. Some nights you get lucky. Tonight, was one of those nights. I was able to get good looks.

We got off to a slow start, but for the most part, we were able to pick it up and take control of the game. The bench did a great job of keeping the wheels turning and giving us a lot of energy.

We're motivated to keep this up because we want home-court advantage, after losing Game 7 on the road at San Antonio last year. That will help us get back to being champions.

I wasn't doing anything special for him - that's how I play every night. No. 1 pick, No. 2 pick or a cagey veteran - it is all the same to me.

We'll use the home-court advantage if we have to. But I think the teams that are going to be successful in these playoffs are going to be the teams that go on the road and win.

When you get the opportunity to close a team out, you just have to come out with a lot of energy early. You just have to go out there and withstand some of their energy, play through it, and hopefully they'll wear themselves down.

We put ourselves in a tough situation. We had to bail ourselves out with our defense. If we play like that for three quarters, it's going to take an effort like that down the stretch to get a victory. We have to start giving that effort from the start.

Every time we play Miami, regardless if it's in the playoffs or a regular-season game or pre-season game, the tension, the excitement, everything is there.

When we come out with that type of focus and that type of energy, it's tough for teams to beat us. When we play the way we played tonight, we make it look like that. We make the game look easy.

They come to play every night. That's all you have to do in this league to be successful.

I thought he would have had 16 way before now.

Right now, I'm not really thinking about any of that. I'm just out here trying to have fun, play basketball.

We've been chased for a long time. We know what kind of beast these playoffs are. We will be prepared for everything and we will go into every single game ready to fight for our lives.

We're chasing something bigger than Miami, or anybody else. We have an opportunity to do something special. We're not worried about sending messages.

If we keep winning, they won't have any choice.

It's going to be good to look out and see someone that you know, and get a chance to see Chauncey and Rip in that first game for the first time. That will be exciting for them. It's going to be good for the whole team. It's going to be good for the city of Detroit to look up at that All-Star Game and see all four Pistons out there.

Nobody wants to see us play. Everybody already knows what we do. But it's cool. But they got no choice, (as) long as we continue to win.

No regrets. I never live with regrets. You just put the past behind you and live with it. And I think if you have regrets, you really don't learn lessons. It's a life lesson, you learn from the past. You just keep on moving, so that's what I do.

Rip and Chauncey have been doing a great job for us all season. Seems like every time we get in a tough situation, one of them steps up.

When we got out there and are active on the defensive end that allows us to get easy baskets on the offensive end. Taking care of the basketball and getting set defense, that's when we're playing Pistons basketball.

Anytime you give up three three-point plays like that, it takes something away from a team. That got the crowd involved. So all we had to do was relax and play.

That's the way it goes if that's the case. I'm not going to make a big deal of it. There are bigger things still to go after.

Everybody is hurt and disappointed right now. But everybody is going to come back ready to play.

We came out and moved the ball around, forced them to go to their second and third option - not allow them to walk down and catch the ball where they want to catch it at.

All that hard work is nothing if we don't continue to play the way we've played. Everybody's focus here is to win a championship. If we don't take that energy into the playoffs, it'd be a wasted season.

Whoever wins this is the world real basketball champion.

They were able to penetrate and get to the basket early. But in the fourth, we got stops. We were able to make them go to their second and third options and shoot over us. We knew if we could get the stops, we could take control of the game.

We just wanted to give ourselves every opportunity to win games. Guys came out ready to play with a lot of energy but the playoffs is a whole different beast. This game won't mean anything for that. Everybody knows teams step up their game once the playoffs start.