NBA FINALS: PISTONS v SPURS

June 22, 2005

Richard Hamilton

RICHARD HAMILTON: It's been fun. I think that ever since Coach got here, I think -- I believe that it took our team to the next level to where we've got to get to, and that was win the world championship and have another opportunity to win another one tomorrow night. Coach has been great. It's one of them things that you don't look past and see what type of decision he makes or anything like that. The only thing you can say is we go out there, try to win a game tomorrow and we'll see what happens.

RICHARD HAMILTON: In this game of basketball, with all of the different trades and everything like that, there's rumors every day. You can never allow yourself to get caught up in what's written in the newspaper or what people hear and things like that. It only takes one person to start a rumor, and that person could be lying through their mouth, you know, but if he says it to the right person and the whole world believes it, you know. We don't allow ourselves to get caught up in that. We've got other things to accomplish, and that's going out and trying to win a championship.

RICHARD HAMILTON: He's our catalyst, he's our leader out there. He runs our team. He's our point guard out there, and he has to make a lot of decisions. The great thing about him, he's capable of doing so many great things on the basketball court, even though he's a point guard, he can score. Like I said, he's a strong point guard. He can play multi-positions and he can defend. He can do a lot of special things out there. He knows how to lead and when you have a point guard that knows how to lead and wants to lead, then you can't ask for anything better than that.

RICHARD HAMILTON: You know, guarding him, I just like to use my speed and my quickness. You know, I have a lot of energy out there and I want to use as much of it as possible. So me and Chauncey is interchangeable. We help each other out on both ends of the floor. That's the great thing about us. Sometimes I can pressure the ball and things like that. You know, it was just one of them things that I want to try to do something a little different and it kind of worked.

RICHARD HAMILTON: Oh, yeah, like I said, as the series goes on, you learn to laugh at a lot of the things that he does, other than get frustrated, mad and things like that. You learn to laugh because he's going to continue to do it regardless of what type of calls they make out there, he's going to do it every play on the court and you can't allow yourself to get caught up. You just have to laugh at it and keep playing.

RICHARD HAMILTON: A lot. Like I said, this is what we do. We know in a situation like this it just ain't right, playing in a Game 7, it's big. We want to go out there and play hard, regardless. It would be a great thing for us to go out on a winning note. I think the guys on our team, we are all prepared to go out there and go to war and do what we've got to do to try to get a win.