Avery Johnson Hold Quotations

We struggled to guard Yao in the first half, but we made some adjustments and were much more physical in the second half. We were fortunate enough to hold him down then.

You have great offensive players in this league who don't let anything bother them. Even when I played, you had supposedly great point guard defenders and they were supposed to get under your skin with their growl or their stare or how they would grab or hold you. There are things you can do on the court to try to take care of that. I've participated in that kind of stuff before. Just be physical.

We won it with our defense, which gave me some ammunition. We didn't score much in the fourth quarter, but neither did they. To hold them to 18 points, that's the only way we could win.

That first-quarter defense probably was as good as I've seen in a long time. No matter who you do it to, when you hold a team to 10 points in a quarter, that's pretty special.