Scott Skiles Quotes (289 Quotes)

In all my years being in the league, including myself, I've never known any rookie to come in and knock your socks off. The NBA is a big step up it's the amount of work and the level of work. Hopefully, this will benefit him.

Even when we got it close, Jamison got away from us. He's been a key guy whenever we've played against them. If we would've been able to do a good job on him and make him shoot a poor percentage, we've had some success. Arenas is normally going to have a pretty good game it's hard to stop him. But Jamison got away from us.

Detroit had their own agenda, which is to rest their guys, and Washington had motivation so that is understandable. That's why you play all 82.

We've lost so many games like this they've been close games and we're trying to fight to the end, but a play has to be made.

I thought he showed some flashes of what stuff he could do. He scored around the basket and showed a nice touch on a perimeter shot. I was happy to be able to give him as many minutes.

I suppose that's a good question. I don't know. Would there be a conflict of interest there because he was in Washington I really haven't given that a whole lot of thought.

By this time next week, we're either going to feel much better about it or probably much worse. It depends on these next few games.

We still have a chance to move up and finish .500. We're going to play to win.

For whatever reason, we meant business when the ball went up tonight. That's the team I see in practice. It was good to see them take it into the game.

It's no secret that the last couple of years we were trying to rebuild and redo our team, and there's a lot of teams that try to do that and can't get in the playoffs. For our guys to get in is a tribute to the way they have been resilient and stayed with it.

No, because I've heard similar things throughout the course of the year. It's something he's going to have to get over. He needs to face the personal responsibility of what he needs to get done. I just look at it as an opportunity to learn a good lesson at this time of year.

It makes you realize that we blew an opportunity to be closer. Going all the way back to the second game of the season, we've had some difficulty making clutch free throws. If your mind is on anything else but your technique, you're probably in trouble. I

(Friday) We could tell right from the beginning, we weren't all there. Tonight, we could tell we were all there. We got really active. We put pressure on them. We were really in tune with our game plan.

Detroit has its own agenda, which is to rest its guys, and Washington has the motivation, which is understandable. So is the Orlando-Indiana game. That's part of it. That's why you play all 82 (games).

With 18 games to go, they don't get much bigger than this. It's not like if we don't win, we're out of it or if we do win, it's devastating to Milwaukee. It's just a very important game.

We had good performances across the board. We like the tempo of our offense, the way it's been going these three games. ... We want to push it up. Tonight, we were more fortunate with it because we were able to get more stops.

There were times when he'd mentally take himself out of a game by almost trying too hard. He doesn't get rattled by one or two mistakes anymore, because he knows he belongs out there. He's also improved his outside shooting, which hopefully shows what you can accomplish by working hard over the summer.

The thing we have to be concerned with is our turnovers, especially down there. If you told me before the series started that we'd have an 18-turnover game and two with 17 and we were going to be 2-2, I'd have said that was a stretch. We can't go down there and turn the ball over 17, 18 times and expect to win. We want to open up the floor, but we have to rely on our decisions.

We played terrible defense (on Monday) and he was talking about touches. I thought that was the incorrect thing to be talking about. I thought Ben was good tonight.

Even if the money was much smaller, you'd still feel some obligation to perform. But I don't think any of us said we expect Tyson to be a different player.

We got back in the game and then short-circuited a little bit with some offensive fouls. We battled them all the way to the end. We just couldn't make the plays.

We lost Shawn too many times tonight. I know from experience, he's a very slippery player. If you relax, he slides behind you. He's got a knack of finding cracks in there. We lost him several times, and that was one critical play where we couldn't afford to lose him and we did.

That's something I really can't complain about all year. Our guys -- every day in practice, every game, even games when we don't look real smooth offensively -- we attempt to play unselfishly and share the ball. It's a fun team to coach in that regard the guys are unselfish, and they like to pass the ball.

We played pretty hard. We didn't always play smart, but we played hard.

I didn't think either team was especially sharp tonight, to put it mildly. It was anybody's game for the taking. They turned it up a little bit and we weren't able to make any big plays to stay with them, we could have at any moment exerted ourselves we could have come back, we just couldn't do it.

He says he's about the same -- hasn't gotten any worse or any better. Today will be a day of rest for his elbow, for sure. We'll try to pick and choose some spots to get him some rest.

It was kind of a typical exhibition game. We had a couple of guys who had trouble relaxing. I thought we had some really questionable shot selection and we struggled stopping them early in the game.

I'm happy that we played hard, but that should be a given. We need to learn from these experiences and make progress. We've had too many times this year when we've come out in the third quarter and haven't been as sharp. It happened again tonight. I can't fault anybody's effort. Our guys fought right to the end, but at this level, there are no moral victories. It's a game we should have won.

Kirk was outstanding tonight pretty much from beginning to end. Defensively he was as good as he always is and he played with a nice tempo. He didn't really force anything, ran the offense well, penetrated and made a lot of good decision.

I've said it many times, Kirk does so many things for our team that his shot-making is down the list.

I'm very happy about it. Our guys have done a great job of finding each other out there. We don't take many bad threes most of them are off the ball movement. We've had games where we haven't made them as well, and we've still been able to win. But it's a nice weapon to have.

They just dominated us all over the floor, and then probably the most disappointing thing -- I thought in the third quarter, we quit. That's something I have to address. ... We were in the game a little bit early on, but they had way more energy than us. They went by our guards at will.

The hard thing is trying to beat a team twice in a short period of time. It's always difficult.

We haven't played well of late. It's obvious for anybody to see. In order for us to win an NBA game, we have to play a lot better than we've been playing.

I thought what we did particularly well tonight was that when calls did not go our way we did not go into one of our tremendously long droughts. We did not hang our heads and look defeated. We did the reverse and picked it up.

I can only speak about Monday's game, and I didn't think there was anything outrageous going on out there. We fouled too much. Maybe two calls on Carmelo were debatable, but the rest of them I thought he earned his right to get to the line.

His personality has definitely come out this year, there's no doubt about it. He's much more comfortable around the guys. With the coaches, we could always have a basketball conversation with him last year because he understood the basketball terminology. But just as far as other conversations, it wasn't terribly difficult but it's much more easy now.

I thought we played hard tonight. We kind of had a pop to our step most of the game. We made too many mistakes and missed too many shots.

The last thing we wanted was to sit out there until 3 in the morning and then fly in.

Typical dad stuff, ... Spending time with my two boys, going to their little league games. And following the NBA, like always.

They put together that team for this time of year.

It wasn't like we had a total letdown or anything we just softened up enough to let him get going. And once he got going, it was very difficult to get any momentum back. Early in the third, we went under a couple of times on screens. He made one, and that really opened his eyes. He put one right in the middle. That's a lesson that needs to be learned -- playing against great players like that, just one possession can get them going. Obviously, if you look at the whole year, the four games we played them, he's averaged well over 30 points against us. We didn't get it done against him this year.

Our problem in the first half was our transition defense, which has been a problem for us all year. They had 11 of their 24 baskets in transition, and many of those were right at the basket. That's unacceptable, and we need to do a better job of that in Game 2.

Most games, when you have more field goals than your opponent, you win in our league. For us, most times, we haven't won. We just juggle players because of foul trouble too much, and we've had a hard time to stop it.

He plays 20 minutes a game and consistently blocks shots all over the place. He's a great defender and still changes ends very well. He's an intimidating-type player. To have a backup center like him is a luxury.

Tonight was similar to other games we have played lately. We had our chances and weren't able to make plays when we had those chances.

We've had a lot of games go against us like that where we haven't been able to seize the moment, and our guys seem to be growing up as a team, and it's nice to see.

I was really proud of the guys. We played really hard. We were active. And we played really solid defense, and we got out with a win.

At that point, you call an automatic timeout. All you have to do is watch a couple of NBA games to know it's a timeout. We had guys out there with enough experience out there to know that. It's inexcusable.

What we tried to talk to the guys about Tuesday morning was that we've got a long trip. We can't have a carry-over from game to game, quarter to quarter, minute to minute. We've got to stay with it and work on our game.