Rick Carlisle Stretch Quotations

It made it an extra challenge because guys coming back needed the reps. The schedule is what it is. We're about to go through another stretch after this two-day break.

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.

We played hard for the most part. We have to do that on a consistent basis. We gave ourselves a chance, but we had some mistakes down the stretch with execution.

He has an NBA skill and that's that he can post up and score. He can also shoot from midrange and I think he'll be able to stretch it maybe to the NBA 3-point line down the line.

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.

How we play against Chicago will go a long way in showing what kind of character we have as a team. We've had two games now where we've had disappointing stretches. We're going to have be better than that to keep legitimate playoff hopes alive because we're in a tough stretch right now.

He showed up and it was clear he couldn't play 40 minutes. Down the stretch he was pretty spent. It was tough.