Rick Carlisle Job Quotations

We tried some. Johnson is a guy that was doing a good job of staying out of harm's way when it came to that (sixth) foul. We did a couple of things, but if you go too much out of what's working to try to get a sixth foul, you can disrupt your own team. That's something you don't want to do.

One of the things we talked about was our need to be more purposeful with our transaction offense. When we take quick, it puts us in a poor position defensively. The guys did a great job of decision-making in transition. Our execution on offense put us in great position to guard and rebound.

We have to avoid becoming stagnant. We knew at some point Orlando would hit a stretch where they hit shots. We also knew that when that happened we had to keep the ball moving on offense and not slow it down and get into isolation plays. That bogged us down in recent games. I thought we did a good job of staying away from that.

I thought he did a great job keeping his emotions under control in both series. I look for him to build on that. There's nobody in this league that always has complete control of their emotions. I thought he set a great tone in the playoffs and I look for him to continue in that vein.

It is great to be in a situation in which you have great players. You find out pretty early in this business that without good players you will not be a good coach. I have been fortunate to be in a very good situation. My job as a coach is to make sure that we progress every year and we can be a championship contender.

I thought in the second half, we did a good job of sticking with what we had to do to give ourselves a chance. Our undoing is not playing 48 minutes at that level.

Michael Redd was a guy we talked a lot of about before the game. (Jackson) did a good job at the start and our whole team reacted to him.

We hoped he was going to be open and have a pocket of space to get an open shot or drive the ball. Bosh did a great job of switching out defensively. I have to take the blame for that. That was a bad call putting a guy in a position that ended up not being a good position.

Three days ago it looked like it might be a possibility. He is doing better. It's just not the right time to push it. Also, if we would have did it, he would have been playing a game without almost any practice time leading up to it, which would have been hard. It makes it tough because he does a good job on (Shaquille O'Neal).

Yao has been playing great for a long stretch. I thought our guys battled him and did a good job in a lot of areas, but we could have done better as a team. You give up 38, that's a lot.

We knew he was somehow going to touch it, whether or not he was going to hand it off to somebody else or take the shot. We had three straight timeouts to talk about it. We did a good job on the first two plays, and the third one they got us and got an open look. We're fortunate to be going back to the hotel with a win.

We missed shots and didn't do a good job defensively. When you let the other team shoot 75 percent in the first quarter, you're going to dig a hole. We have to do better in all areas.

We had the game going pretty well and we were playing good basketball. They made a run at the end of the half and they got the game tied and I thought that gave them a lot of momentum going into the second half. They did a great job of finishing off plays.

The second and third quarters hurt us defensively. We struggled and had some stretches where we couldn't stop them. Detroit is a team that is going to do a good job in the last play type of situations, but I'm more in tune to what happened in the second and third quarters than on the last play.

Any loss right now is a big factor for all the teams involved. Another thing I think is important to point out is Tony Brown did a great job taking over for Doc Rivers. He's a former assistant coach of mine. I'm happy for him. I'm not happy for us. We're in a precarious position right now.

They didn't do a great job with the coverage, but, hey, the way Tinsley played tonight, he put the defense in a tough situation. That was a huge play because it was so hard for Jermaine to get open looks around the basket. It gave our team some energy at the defensive end.

They are a well-balanced team that has become very efficient at both ends of the floor. I think (coach Maurice) Cheeks has done a great job of figuring out a lineup. A lot of it is going to come back to Iverson and Webber because they are two great players. Iverson, in the last two weeks, he's been playing by his standards at a higher level.

They're a good team that's going to do a good job in those situations. We probably could have executed better.

It's about winning games, and right now, we have to focus in on the guys we have and doing our best possible job at playing at a high level to give ourselves a chance to win.

It's been tough for Fred this year because of the thumb; he's been in and out of it. He played great in the first two games, and I wanted to give him the opportunity to start and play a real significant stretch of minutes. We struggled to get him the ball (Saturday). I have to do a better job of putting him in a position where he can attack the basket and make plays. He wasn't able to do that, that's his game.

It was a deceptive final score. It was obviously a very difficult game. Our bench struggled, but the guys that started held it together. Anthony Johnson played just a tremendous all around game. He's really playing at a high level right now. He is getting the job done, simply as that.

The key part of the game was the end of the second quarter. They did a great job finishing plays and giving themselves a chance to win. ... We couldn't get over the hump.

A.J. had a great night. In the second half he did a great job of running the team. His efficiency in shot making and courage to step up in some tough spots put us in a position to win.