Flip Saunders Four Quotations

I thought the last three or four minutes our defense was impressive.. If we play like that for 48 minutes it would make things a lot easier for ourselves.

I think from talking to a lot of coaches, I'd say there's a pretty good chance of three going and a possibility of four. Just from talking to coaches. But you've had a lot of coaches say they would vote for five. Whether five could make it would be tough. Even if four makes it -- even three -- when you don't have any of them voted in by the fans, that's pretty unbelievable.

We've had, what, four sets of back-to-backs here in the last 15 days? It's been a grind.

We try to talk a little bit, keep in touch every now and then, follow each other's career. It's a unique situation. You have two guys who played with each other, went four years together.

The one reason we have been in the games prior to this was because of our defense. We had four (actually three) straight games of holding teams in the 70s. That's pretty tough to do in this league.

The biggest thing that I was impressed with was the last three or four minutes, our defense was (good). It we played like that for 48 (minutes), we'd make things a lot easier for ourselves.

I have to thank Charles (Barkley) for giving a great halftime talk when he said the game was over. I thought we were playing too perfect, but in the second half we played exceptionally well. When our four guys (four All-Stars from Detroit) were in we started to run some plays, and I think that helped us.

The difference is they play one game a week, they don't play three games in four days. We're kind of in a different situation. And part of it was how sharp we've been. We've been extremely sharp the last few weeks. That's how they played (Sunday) night together as a group.

You've got a team that had three days off playing against a team that played four games in five days, in four different cities, and a back-to-back situation. They played with a great amount of energy and they carried that energy to a win.

The first time I talked about that, we went out and turned it over the first four times we touched the ball. That mark I credit to players who are extremely disciplined and players who know their roles. They don't play out of character and that goes back to what I've talked about all year -- this team has a very high basketball intelligence.