Byron Scott Quotes (132 Quotes)

I thought (Bass) was going to go up there and at least make one. I thought he played really well tonight. There's a lot of things he still has to learn, but his energy and his effort were big for us.

I think they would understand. All the people that were in Louisiana before the hurricane are not there right now, so I don't think the fan base is there right now for our basketball team, especially right now in this month. It might change in March.

I'll always bleed purple and gold, but I'm not going to give up any wins.

I don't know what our record is going against him. I know in Jersey my second and third years, we had a good team. But that doesn't matter. He's still a great coach.

I told David he makes me look good. I told Kirk (Snyder) to go to the corner, but that David should be able to step back and be open. He stepped up and knocked it down like he's done so many times this season.

The problems we have to correct are all between the ears. It's not so much the physical problems. We have too many guys who don't understand, who don't get it. I don't know. Maybe we're reading too many of the clippings. Maybe we're thinking we're better than we are.

So I said, 'Let's take two weeks and get your body completely healed. That allowed us to get Junior back here ... and now we're not struggling with Danny going 40-plus minutes every night.

Hes a monster. Thats all I can say about him.

We knew we weren't going to be able to keep Kobe under 30, but you want to make him work for it. And I think we did a pretty good job of that.

I said a few weeks ago that J.R. wasn't playing well and if it continued, I would have to make some changes, and today was the perfect time to do that.

Marc Jackson is a banger, a very physical guy who can make shots.

He's going to have to really grasp it a lot quicker. He seems to have some trouble with it. But once he gets there, I think he's going to be pretty good.

The Princeton offense is old-style basketball. Dribble, pass and shoot. I always thought it's the way the game was supposed to be played.

We played hard tonight. We had the tempo in our favor and that's the type of basketball that we want to play.

We made a lot of changes this year and thought we'd gotten much more athletic. I didn't know we were going to have the same problems on the defensive end. Guys are getting beaten off the dribble like drums, and then when the help comes, the other guys aren't coming in.

I thought we were soft. Soft on defense. Soft on the boards. That tells me we're scared.

When I looked at the schedule, I thought he could miss 10 games at the worst.

We were real small. We've gotten bigger in a matter of minutes.

Well, the door is still open. It is only open slightly but it is open. It's a matter of us taking care of business and getting a little help.

He still has a love for the game. He just took a slight detour, and it cost him. Everybody makes mistakes, and he'll hopefully learn from this and be able to get back.

The players' minds were on their teammate instead of the game, which is understandable. I thought after a while that (his players) had to realize that we still had to win this game.

We just had no resistance on the defensive end tonight. You can't trade baskets or think that you are going to outscore a team like the Wizards.

I knew he was extremely aggressive on the defensive end, and has a very good defensive head.

After we drafted Chris Paul, it became obvious that Dan would look to sign elsewhere in order to have a chance to compete for a starting point guard job, ... Making this trade gives Dan that chance, which he earned by what he did for us last season, and it also prevents us from losing him without compensation. We wish him the best of luck in Boston.

Hopefully, one of them will be back soon - soon being Friday, It puts a lot more emphasis on guys to play a lot more minutes. But that's pro basketball. You've got to be ready to play.

Rod said the guy was the real deal, so I asked him why did he fire him. Rod said that he (Scott) had a problem with one of the players for something Byron said to the media.

I knew that we could win 35. But behind closed doors when I'm talking to the coaches and talking to the players, our goals are a lot higher, and obviously we've changed our goals.

We are playing soft right now. Every team we are going against is thinking we are soft, and the only way to change that is to not be soft. If we lose going at it 110 percent, then we can live with that. But we are just not doing that.

I thought we had gotten to the point that both parties were OK with it. We're disappointed and I'm sure he is. He was looking forward to being here.

I don't think Chris will play tomorrow. I would love to just let him relax for the next two games and see how he feels for Monday. Right now, I think he's still pretty banged up. I know how bad he wants to play, but I don't think it would be in his best interests to play the next two games at least.

He's just a great little player. He's got a lot of heart. We knew the triple double would come sooner than later, but obviously tonight we really needed it. I thought he really came through big time.

I would love to play here. I would love to stay here and play in Oklahoma City next year. I think our guys are at home here. I think the fans have been unbelievable. Out of our 12 home wins, I think the fans out there have won half of them. So, I would prefer to stay here next year.

The people have been incredible, ... I walked into a place last night, and the person said, 'You guys are like movie stars. We don't know how to act.' I said, 'No, we're just normal people. We just want to be wanted.'

I really don't think they'll have the residency, the economics to support a second franchise. I think our attendance would probably be worse, because I don't think you have enough people. That's my main concern.

We're just not a very good basketball team right now. To me, we have a lot of glaring holes on both ends of the floor. The biggest thing is that we're so weak mentally.

It doesn't hurt us defensively. We're probably a little better defensively but it definitely hurts us offensively. He's one of the guys that we can spread the defense out a little bit with his shooting ability.

Terrible. I thought we started off terrible, no sense of urgency, no resistance on the defensive end. We played like the game didn't mean a thing. It's not everybody obviously, but as a team, collectively, we were awful. We looked more like we were scared than anything.

If you look at our energy and our effort in the Clipper game, and then you look at tonight, it's night and day. It's not the same. The Clipper game, we pretty much kept the same high intensity level.

All we can do is control our destiny and try to win games. If they win then you've got to take your hat off to them. We can give ourselves an opportunity by winning games. That's all we can do.

We were able to get a young center that we feel is going to get much better and better, that's shown improvement. He had his best year in Phoenix playing the type of basketball that we play. And then we got a veteran in Aaron Williams. We've still got our first-round picks.

It was a heck of a win. We lost those two guys, and you know how much they mean to us and how much we count on them to take the ball handling duties. We made some adjustments at halftime and had David West bring it up a few times, as well as Desmond Mason, who did a good job.

Fourteen down, in this league, with 12 minutes left in the game is nothing. We relaxed. On the defensive end, they get any shot they want. And then you try to pick it back up offensively, and you're dead. We have done that three or four times already this season.

We want to establish some type of a home-court advantage. We've got a great crowd, so we've got to bring an energy and a physicality to the game that we haven't been bringing, and all our guys know that right now.

I just want them to be aware. That's why when they walk in that locker room, the first thing they see is the standings, where they are. Now you start to see you're right there.

I think a few of those guys in that locker room have quit. It's disappointing to me (those guys) won't be here, it's as simple as that. We have no mental or physical toughness on this team right now. It's just hard to watch that it's hard to watch these young guys that don't understand and don't get it.

We can go 10 deep very easily. Speedy is a guy that can play extended minutes for us off the bench and give us a boost. I loved the way he came out and got after it on defense and played hard.

We came out here and thought it was going to be an easy night. That's when a team has to know they mentally have to go after it even more.

As a player, you're coming in wide-eyed and bushy-tailed and you have no idea of all the things that are going to be thrown at you at a very early stage, and it can be frightening at times.

We took care of tonight. That was the first phase. Now we have to get these games on the road. Each day that goes by we continue to get closer to our goal.

Sometimes we get ourselves into trouble on the offensive end. We might pass up a shot, but tonight we did a real good job of moving the ball around and that opened up the shots we can knock down.