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NBA EASTERN CONFERENCE FINALS: CAVALIERS v PISTONS

May 26, 2007

Mike Brown

CLEVELAND, OHIO: Practice Day

Q. The guys seemed very happy at practice today. There's certainly no nerves or tension detectable.
COACH BROWN: That's true. There's no tension. We're not nervous. We're confident and ready to play.

Q. Could that be because of what happened last year when you lost your first two and came back and won three in a row perhaps?
COACH BROWN: Well, maybe it could because we've experienced this in the past. But it's a confident group anyway, and I think just with us being a confident group, you really -- no need to panic or no sense of time -- time to panic.

Q. Is this a must-win game, Game 3?
COACH BROWN: Game 1 was must-win, Game 2 was must-win, Game 3, you're right, it's must-win (laughter).

Q. Talk about Game 2, you were very upset. How do you try to regain your -- your calming down because obviously that was a very pivotal situation and you were very upset with that.
COACH BROWN: I thought I was pretty calm yesterday during the media, and I'm calm now. It is what it is. The game is over, they beat us, and now we've got to get ready to lace them up and try to get out there in order for Game 3. It's going to be tough for us.

Q. How much more physical is this round than last round, and do you think you guys are responding physically?
COACH BROWN: Yeah, New Jersey was physical with us. They shrunk the floor, made it tough for us to score. The difference is that the Detroit Pistons have been here before. They know what they can do and can't do in terms of doing certain things on the floor to you. There's a lot of things that they do which you do maybe if you're in high school and you're playing against your brother in junior high for the first time and you know exactly when to hold and when to grab and how to set a screen or exactly when to cut, you know, just little subtle things that don't necessarily stick out a lot. They're very, very, very good at it because they've been this late and they've got the experience at this point for being this late in the playoffs.

Q. Plus Rasheed is a little harder to handle than Mikki Moore just because of his size?
COACH BROWN: Yeah, that size standpoint. Mikki Moore is a solid player. You can't even compare the two because Rasheed is a great player. Obviously, yeah, the talent level, personnel is different from the Nets and the Pistons. The Nets have three terrific perimeter players and some good other players, and the Pistons have three terrific perimeter players and a lot of terrific post players. So the talent is different, too.

Q. Did you or someone from your team call the League and complain about the calls or --
COACH BROWN: I don't ever do that, even during the regular season I don't do that. That's something that Danny does from time to time, so you would have to check to see if he did it or not, but I did not go to Danny and say, hey, Danny, you've got to do this. I yelled at him a little bit coming off the floor to get some frustrations out.

Q. I heard about that.
COACH BROWN: Yeah, it was fun.

Q. You are normally a calm guy, when you watch the game film and see yourself, do you think, oh, my God, I did that, or do you think, yeah, that's where I was at that moment?
COACH BROWN: Yeah, that's where I was at that time, and the refs we had were great veteran officials. That's just emotions during the game and at the end of the game. That's all it was.

Q. Do you think that there's a danger with Anderson sometimes that maybe he tries to oversell certain things, because he's so energetic, that maybe that could be misinterpreted?
COACH BROWN: Yeah, it could, especially the way the foreigners play the game as opposed to the Americans. A lot of times -- not just that, they're emotional players, and they react differently to a lot of situations. That's Andy. That's Andy.
Obviously in situations like that, we've just got to go take the game, and that's what we've got to do.

Q. After the few years he's been here, how much of an entity is his hair unto its own?
COACH BROWN: I'll tell you what, I was walking to get something to eat last night, and a group of high school girls came running up to me, and they played sports and they were really excited, cute little girls, and they said everybody -- one of them is like, hey, tell LeBron -- everybody wants me to tell LeBron something, but then the next word out of their mouths was, "oh, my gosh, Andy, he is so gorgeous. Tell Andy I love his hair." So I asked the little girl what's your name, and she said Ann or something like that, and I said, Ann, when I see Andy tomorrow, I'm going to go up to Andy tomorrow and say, Ann says she loves your hair and you're gorgeous.
So it's always LeBron first, and then, oh, Andy ooh. I guess because Sasha is starting to play good somebody said Sasha's name, too.

Q. But he doesn't have the hair.
COACH BROWN: No, he doesn't, but he's got that cool smoothness about him that I think they like.

Q. Did you have high school girls run up to you when you were in high school?
COACH BROWN: No (laughter). I never did when I had hair. Now that I don't, they just want me to do something for them. I tricked my wife.

Q. Sorry to get this back to basketball, but when they make the pushes they do at the start of the third and you're forced to use that early time-out, what does that do to a team to kind of set you back on your heels when that happens coming out of the locker room?
COACH BROWN: They're a great third quarter team. You know, we're an okay third quarter team, but the one thing that we know is they're going to come out and they're going to come out aggressively on both ends of the floor. It's a Catch-22 because you want to try to take a time-out to stem the tide a little bit, and sometimes it's like if you take it too quick your players are like, hey, let's get a couple baskets, we're good, we're playing with confidence. So it's a fine line in terms of when to take the time-out and how you take it and what you say to the guys in the huddle.
I knew they were going to keep pushing and keep pushing, so I tried to burn a couple to see if we could get them to slow down and come back out less aggressive than what they were, and it didn't work, they just kept it on us.

Q. Is it their level of aggression more than them doing something different?
COACH BROWN: They didn't do anything play-wise, they didn't trick us. They just came out and got in our chests and they had us on our heels and they got in the passing lanes and denied the passes and picked up full court, and offensively you could see the difference.
Early in the third quarter Chauncey comes off a pin-down, and Chauncey is a set-up guy for most of the games until late in the ballgame, but he knew they were down 12, he knew he played well in that second quarter, he knew if we had momentum in that third quarter and got more separation, the way we played defense that might be tougher. It wouldn't mean they couldn't come back, but it would be tougher for them to come back on us the way we played then. So he came out and he was aggressive from jump street. He came off that pin-down, did not hesitate and rose up and shot it.
Another time he got a steal or a turnover and he pushed the ball right into three defenders' teeth and he kicked it to Rip, and right away Rip shot it. So that type of basketball, they played with a sense of urgency, and we didn't respond well to it.

Q. Is that the biggest difference with the inexperience factor is that they know how to take it to that, whereas you guys are still trying to learn how to deal with that?
COACH BROWN: That has something to do with them playing together and being in the Eastern Conference Finals and winning a championship. I think you go through those types of games and you get yourself put in those situations and being together as long as they've been, then you start knowing how to handle the situation whether you're down or you're up and you know when to turn it on even if you're playing at a high level. Because they were playing at a high level, but even to take yourself to a level that you didn't think you could get to, they're capable of doing that.

Q. You maybe had gone to your small lineup occasionally, but I know you don't really like to do that because of the match-ups on defense. Do you not want to go to that line-up (Inaudible)?
COACH BROWN: I went to it the other night, and we played fairly well in the second quarter, and the third quarter we started out, they shrunk the floor, we had some looks at threes, we didn't knock them down, and we started out a little bit in the third quarter and the beginning of the fourth, and that's why I ended up going back to our starters, to try to win the game for us.

Q. But you'd prefer not to have to do that, right?
COACH BROWN: Well, what it turns into if we're not careful, it can turn into a jump-shooting lineup. Whichever one it could be, I still like those guys and those guys are capable of doing it. I still like us to be able to attack the rim and drive and kick and so on and so forth. The only post-up presence we have there with that line-up is LeBron, and at times if the match-up is right, Donyell can post and Andy can post, but I'm not used to calling in and force feeding those guys on the post and they're not used to getting force fed on the post.
It's a young, different lineup that neither do I have a ton of experience with nor do they have a ton of experience with playing together on the floor. That's what it boils down to.

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