…The team seems to me, since those last four games they had to win at the end of the season, that they’ve been all-business, almost as if they were waiting for this. I didn’t think they could turn it on the way they’ve been turning it on…You just can see it in all of them, from the one man down to 15, they all have a different swagger about them now and a different mindset. Their game faces are different…The experience factor has really been a big help to these guys because they have a different demeanor now; they just seem to be more calm about what’s going on and what they have to do and in understanding the playoffs. That each game has its own identity...
Sunday, they weren’t sharp, as far as executing was concerned. But I think Larry is doing a great job at understanding how to be the point guard even when his offensive game is not going well. In the third quarter, he could see that we needed Drew going and he purposely brought the ball to Drew, to his side of the floor, cleared everybody else out, and he tried to get Drew going because he knew we needed Drew and then all of a sudden Drew started coming around and that opened up everything for everybody else. Larry does a masterful job of understanding how to get the right people the ball to get them going. And then he always has the ability to do his own thing – and he started picking his spots to do that, too...
Sasha hadn’t played but 28 seconds in the playoffs in his whole career. Then all of a sudden you get thrown into the middle of it and everybody’s expecting big things. The two glamour positions in the NBA are the 2 and the 3 and all of a sudden you get thrown into a situation to where you have to defend a guy like Carter, when you get stuck with a guy like Carter, man, and everybody’s expecting you to stop him and you’ve watched him score 40 or 50 - it does have a tendency to tighten you up. But what Sasha understood is that offensively is where you attack Carter, make him play D. The more you score against him, the less he’s gonna score. And I thought he did a super defensive job and he did look like himself. That play he made against Kidd was great. It was incredible. Most people would have given up on the play. Also, he watches what’s going on and who’s doing what around the league. He’s played long enough now that you know guys, you know their tendencies. So he knew Jason Kidd’s tendency is to lay the ball up in those situations, not dunk it. He knew he had a chance with Kidd. That tells me he’s starting to get very aware of what’s going on around him and that definitely will make him a better basketball player. But he kept going and you can see, when Sasha’s out there just playing the game and not worrying about every step he takes, he’s a pretty good basketball player...
Lenny Wilkens and Nate Thurmond were the ones who gave me a little bit of playoff preparation, but you cannot really prepare for it, even though they tell you. You cannot prepare for it until you get out there. And what I found out was that the intensity level is much different. Guys that I would just – chooo – beat with no problem all of a sudden now that guy’s two steps closer to me and he’s right on me. He’s scratching and clawing, he’s doing everything to stop me from doing what I have to do. Whereas during the regular season, he’s up on me, but you don’t feel the intensity pressure. In the playoffs, you feel the intensity pressure. And big people, the big men, they don’t let you just make layups anymore. All of a sudden, you pay for a layup. So what you do is you have to look for the contact, you want the contact because you know it’s gonna come, and once you get the contact, you try to make the three-point play. That to me was the biggest difference, the intensity level – plus defensively, I had to be more aware of my helping responsibilities because you get so caught up as a 2 guard in trying to stop a Phil Chenier or a Jo-Jo White, you’re trying to stop these guys so much that you get blinders on and then you forget about your helping responsibilities, too. So you have to kind of focus and kind of prepare yourself for that, too.
When you think about it, being off that long – and I remember when we were off six days and the Celtics blew us out that first game and we got blown out because the difference in waiting that long is you lose game speed. You practice, practice, practice – we even had game-time scrimmages and all that, but it does not relate to the game speed. Because you also have the adrenaline rush that you don’t have during practices because of the 20,000 people in there, screaming and hollering, and so that just sucks all the energy out of you and you have a tendency to get fatigued quicker. And that’s one of the things I was worried about, playing against a team like New Jersey...
New Jersey is gonna try and shoot more, shoot better. They may try to attack inside more, but at the same time, they’re gonna isolate Carter a lot, try to get Sasha in foul trouble early. Jason Kidd’s gonna try and penetrate more. I mean, personally, the way Jason Kidd’s going, you almost want him to do it himself. Because when he starts penetrating and dishing the ball off is when they’re tough. But when he has the ball and he’s penetrating and you stay one-on-one with him, that takes Richard Jefferson out. And see, when you let Jefferson play off of kid, that’s when you really have trouble. You gotta keep Jefferson from playing off of Kidd some kind of way. Because Carter’s gonna get his and Jason’s gonna get his 10 rebounds, 10 assists – it’s the scoring level, you don’t want to him to get up around 15 points because it’s tough then. And Jefferson, keep him out of the 20s. If you keep him out of the 20s, then you’re all right...But rebounding-wise, if New Jersey doesn’t rebound well, they’re not going to run. That’s why they didn’t run; their big men got something like nine rebounds between the three of them while their guards got like 30. So when you look at that, how can you run when your big men aren’t rebounding. So hopefully we can keep that trend up...
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