NBA EASTERN CONFERENCE FINALS: PISTONS v HEAT

May 25, 2005

Stan Van Gundy

COACH STAN VAN GUNDY: As far as I know, he's playing (laughter).

COACH STAN VAN GUNDY: My right thigh? When you exercise as little as I do, it wouldn't matter if I were hurt. You wouldn't notice any difference.

COACH STAN VAN GUNDY: There were only 22 in the whole game. For whatever reason, there just weren't a lot of free throw attempts in the game. It wasn't a matter of us not taking the ball to the basket. One thing you always look for when you see your free throw numbers is, are we attacking the basket, are we going to the basket? We had 52 points in the paint. We had a lot of shots around the basket, so it wasn't a matter of us or even him firing it up an abnormal amount of jump shots. He got about the same ratio of shots around the basket, the number of jump shots he got, so as far as that goes, nothing needs to be done differently.

COACH STAN VAN GUNDY: Well, in the 1st quarter they scored 24 and I wasn't overly upset. They hit four 3s, and teams seem to start shooting the ball pretty well from the perimeter when they're fresh, so I wasn't as worried. The big concern in that game defensively was the 3rd quarter. We didn't get the job done at all defensively in the 3rd quarter. I didn't think that we ever got to a point in the 3rd quarter where they were taking tough shots. They pretty much got what they wanted, and we really only played probably in the game eight minutes in the 4th quarter of really solid defense, and that's not enough to get it done against a team like this. So it's obviously a concern.

COACH STAN VAN GUNDY: Dwyane has always been good at being able to see things and make adjustments. As I've said before, I think he's someone that's able to learn and apply stuff to his game, and I think it starts with he has a humility to understand, you know what, I've got to get better. A lot of guys would just write it off, "I had a bad night," not worry about it, and that's not to give enough respect to the defense being played to you. I mean, it was good, and you need to really look at it and how you're being played and make some adjustments. Dwyane is a guy who watches a lot of film. I mean, I'm not talking he's out sitting down three, four hours a day, but he watches film on a regular basis of not only how he's playing defensively but also how people are playing him. I think he's done a lot of that during the playoffs this year. I think it's helped him. I think he's a guy able to make adjustments. I think he'll be better, but I still think their defense will be very good. Nothing is going to be easy for us in this series. We knew that coming in.

COACH STAN VAN GUNDY: Look, our perimeter guys assisted them about as much as they could; Eddie had seven defensive rebounds, Dwyane had five defensive rebounds. Their bigs pounded our bigs on the glass. Their three bigs 29 and 14 on our three bigs, both sets of bigs playing 93 minutes. We've got to do a better job. There's one area there aren't a lot of X's and O's. I don't have a lot of rebounding schemes in place. You've got to block your man out, period. We got our butts kicked in that area. Our guys are well aware of that, and we've got to do a better job tonight.