Avery Johnson Game Quotations

What a great young player. You turn over No. 6, and there's Tony's No. 9. But he's better, he's quicker, and just a terrific player. He and Timmy (Duncan) just make a great one-two punch. He plays the game the right way. He sticks to what he does very well, and I'm looking forward to coaching him on All-Star weekend.

When he is aggressive and mixing his game up, they don't play him for one particular area of his game. He showed up his post-up game, his driving ability, his 3-point shot and his in-between game.

I don't' think we're going to actually find out who we play until the last game or two of the regular season.

When he's on his game and he's playing tough, hard-nosed defense and getting rebounds, getting some assists, guarding one of the better perimeter players and scoring, I'm a much better coach.

We are fortunate to get out of here with a victory. Both teams played some really awesome defense and we just couldn't get our offense in gear in the second half. This is another game that we proved to ourselves that we can win basketball games with our defense. I don't know if we would have won this game in the past. Now we are a different team.

Hopefully the next game. I'm hoping that if this were a playoff game, he'd be playing.

Our team is not playing enough of a 48-minute game and that's the disappointing thing. We know it's tough to win road games. This was a hot team team we were playing, give them credit. But you can't play 18-20 minutes of a second half and expect to beat any NBA team.

Our first quarter defensively really set the tone. We worked on a lot of stuff this morning. They (Atlanta) missed a lot of shots but the defense was better than it was in that last game (against Golden State). We just threw out that last game.

We feel fortunate to get out of here with a victory. Both teams played awesome defense. I don't know if we win this game in the past. Now, we're a different team.

We put together a pretty decent game from start to finish. We had a few key contributors from Dirk and Devin finding Terry for those big shots to start the third. But again, we have a few things to work on.

We put out a lot of energy out there but it was a total team effort. It was a hard-fought overtime game and fortunately we came out on the winning end. They're tough when you lose them and they're tough when you win them.

The reason we won the game tonight is because of the fans. They are the reason we won the game tonight. They stayed with us the whole game. Nobody was booing or questioning the players. I can go on and over and over about the game, but thank you fans.

This series is not over. We've been in that position (down 0-2) before and we have a lot of respect for what they do throughout the game and see why they are one of the top teams in the Western Conference.

We had to get this game behind us for a lot of reasons. We hadn't played well this year against Lakers, and Kobe's been averaging 50 points on us. We didn't want that to happen again.

We had to get this game behind us for a lot of different reasons. We hadn't played particularly well this year against this team.

This was a disgusting game for us tonight. We deserved to lose. Kobe was spectacular and we had no answer for him. You have to take your hat off to him.

We just wanted to make sure we were on the same page. We're still firm that they're not going to come back until they're ready. And they're not ready. We probably won't have them back in the next game or two.

We just had to make some points about it. We've got to play our best basketball to win Game 1.

The road wasn't too friendly to us the last time. I'm already getting a bad memory. Hopefully, we'll have a better response on the road overall than the last game and give ourselves a chance to win by playing our system. But we've gone back to some basics that seem to have helped us.

Are they tired of what? What have we done? It's a hundred days to the Finals right now. This is what the NBA season is about. It's not about having three days off between a game or anything like that. This is the nuts and bolts of the NBA season. Your body doesn't feel as good, you fight a little fatigue, you have some injuries and nobody cares about injuries.

It's a game we've got to go to San Antonio and play. Then we have to come back and play another game (against Charlotte on Friday). I think the big swing games will be in April. I think there's too much of the season left to call this a swing game.

It's not even so much 2-0 for us, it's just trying to play this game like there's no tomorrow. When we do that, we seem to play better, we seem to play more focused, and that's the only way you can play against Memphis.

Eight out of the 10 guys in our rotation were in a quote-unquote insurmountable situation last year when we played against Houston. For us, that's something that's sunk in, that we talk a lot about. We've got some guys who know how to respond. Is this game any bigger than Game 3 in Houston last year? ... I don't think so.

It was not a flawless game ... but I thought we were a little bit more aggressive and our aggression paid off.

These two teams have a lot of pride. Memphis doesn't back down from anybody, and it has not played its best game yet.

In my opinion, looking at that game and looking at some of our recent All-Star games, the game was much more serious. Now, they still scored a lot of points. But the games were a little bit more physical from what I can tell.