Doc Rivers Quotes (120 Quotes)

We just kept scratching. I told our guys at halftime that I thought our first half was as soft defensively as we'd been all year. And we started our third quarter out the same way. They got three or four open shots and I had to burn two timeouts but then I thought our bench, even though they were outscored in a big way, was the reason we won the game.

Chicago's speed and their pick-and-roll has given Miami trouble in the past. At the end of the day though, size will win out and that will favor Miami.

We narrowed it down to Jackson and then Freddie Jones (who would take the last shot). Tony got up into Jackson, which I thought was the right thing to do, and they had to shoot a fade-away shot.

San Antonio is the best defensive team in the last seven or eight years. They don't normally change things, but they changed their (defensive) coverage three or four times in that game. It didn't work, unfortunately.

You know we're going to make it close. But this was a great win for us. We needed a road win.

It's a tough loss. The game felt like the team who had the ball last was going to score. Nobody was playing defense on either team. I guess that's what people want to watch. I don't.

Another calm night. I think we deserved that one after the last two times that we played them. We felt we stole this one tonight. But we felt they stole two from us, so we owed them that one.

I think Paul's team play enabled us to win on this trip. He's been great. I think people will focus on his scoring, but he's done so many other things. We are continuing to improve. We are becoming a team.

I thought about getting my All-Star ballot back and putting Jake on it. He's not going to be a guy who gets you 30 points a night, but every night, he's willing to do the dirty stuff. He wants to bang. He's going to have good nights and bad nights, but he's an excellent guy to have on your team.

He's a great scorer every night. It's the other things that he's done for this team that just keeps giving us hope that . . . with the things that we can add, we can be a good basketball team in the near future.

Wally and Paul played so well off each other. Well, everybody did a great job. The defense, at times, was really good with the rotations, and I just thought the ball moved great.

The funniest part is I missed most of the celebration because I ran into the locker room because I thought that's what everyone did, ... I probably sat in there for five minutes and not one player came in there. I came back out and Michael Wilson's on the rim, guys are celebrating. I guess I should have stayed out there, but I didn't know.

This was by far the worst, the toughest. I'll second-guess every decision I made, and everything we did.

Their defense really bothered us. Paul had to work way too hard to get his offense. I thought it took a toll on him.

He just wasn't responding. He couldn't move out on the floor. He was hurting the team and he was hurting himself. I was worried about the confidence. At the end of the year the one thing I try to protect, especially with our young guys, is going into the (summer) with a positive feeling.

I do believe you have to build a core to become a good basketball team. We're starting to get a core of guys. It would be nice to staple some of the guys' pictures on the wall instead of using the velcro.

It was a hard-fought game. They made some timely shots, late clock shots did us in. I thought the third quarter, the one stretch, just really, really hurt us. I thought we really lost our intensity. We started watching them play for a while. And I thought that really hurt us. And our bench has to do something for us.

Do you judge me on three years of overachievement or 10 games of underachievement

Well, that was not a pretty game obviously for us. I never thought we had anything going for the most part. I thought the effort was up and down. I thought Washington was far more focused than us.

It is nice when you are a scorer like Ricky and you can make a contribution in another way besides scoring. That first quarter might have been the worst defense we played all season, but they turned it around with the way (Davis and Pierce) played in the fourth quarter.