Carlos Arroyo Quotes (16 Quotes)

The fifth Puerto Rican to play in the NBA, Arroyo, 24, had an excused absence on the third day of training camp so he could attend a reception in honor of Hispanic Heritage Month held at the WhiteHouse. The highlight came when President Bush thanked Arroyo for attending. Honestly, ... I was sort of surprised he knew my name.

To practice, knowing you're not going to play, is hard. He took it, he learned and he grew. Now he's got an opportunity and he's taking advantage of it.

It's very hard to make an impact in less minutes. I try to do my best, and I've had games when I come in and I do my distributing job as a point guard, get my assists going. It's just very hard.

A lot of people have opened their eyes now. The game is getting played more and more all around the world. We get more respect now than we used to.

We beat Dallas at home. Hopefully we'll have a game like we did against Dallas. We're looking forward to playing a team like that. It gives us an opportunity to know where we're at as a team, how much we've grown, and where our confidence level is.

He has a smile almost every day, and just his game speaks for himself. You can tell he's having a great time.

I think we stayed hungry. But ... we can't put ourselves in a position to be down 20 (points) to be able to start playing basketball.

About the only thing all players seem to agree on is that it's better than it was in the preseason, when refs were calling everything and some games turned into free-throw contests. I really haven't noticed much difference, ... Sometimes they call it, and sometimes they don't. I'm just glad they're not calling as many fouls as they did in the preseason. Those games were taking forever.

He's very quick and fast on the break. Very crafty and he gets his teammates involved. Every time you get a player like that, he's hard to stop.

Me and him were talking a lot about us coming here and him having an opportunity here. And basically what he was telling me was he wants to get the love for basketball back. That means a lot to players who don't get a chance to play.

I wish it never happened. Not so much for myself - I can handle it on my own - but it involves my family. They're trying to adapt to a new city. Now that I have a daughter, it's way different. That's the sad thing about the whole thing. You leave friends and people you're really close to behind.

I didn't think it was going to be kind of weird, but it (was). I was having fun. I love those guys and I miss them.

We're not going to win all 82 games straight. Guys get tired, sometimes we lose our focus. We lose games. But right now we're on top of our game, I believe. We need to continue to do that to succeed. We want to win and be able to go into the break right. You feel better.

This has given us confidence. Next year is going to be great.

I saw an opening and I took it. It was important for us to get a win like this. Every time we win one like this it makes us stronger for the future.

My situation couldn't get any worse in Detroit. I was playing what, six minutes I was just there. I was a little annoyed, you know But I got through it. Our job is to maintain ourselves ready to play, take advantage whenever called. Hopefully I will get that opportunity here.