Rafer Alston Team Quotations

It comes down to sticking with our game plan, not getting away from the things we know we need to ? that's continuing to find Yao, and keeping our turnovers down. When we turn the ball over and we're not getting the ball to Yao, letting him create shots for us as they double team and if they don't double, letting him score, we're just giving away the game. We were right there. We should have played the game the same way we did in the (first) half.

Preparation is my biggest thing. I knew in Toronto we didn't prepare to have what it takes to win the game. We didn't know what the other team was doing. We didn't have a clue how we were going to defend. That frustrated me. We were going out there cold to try to win games.

You're a professional, you have pride, and you have a contract to go out and play hard. But we do have things to play for, whether personal agendas or team goals. You have to play hard and stay hungry.

It was great team defense. Everybody's alert, aware and ready. We're starting to pick up our intensity defensively.

You can still win games shooting a bad percentage. You've got to do the little things, and for some reason we're not doing them. I don't know why. We've got some great veteran guys on this team and we know better, but we have to find a way to get to loose balls and secure the rebounds.

You want to play up-tempo. You always want to come out aggressive and set a pace for your team to play. We were making them have to defend and we were making them run up and down the court.