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NBA EASTERN CONFERENCE FINALS: CAVALIERS v PISTONS

May 29, 2007

Mike Brown

CLEVELAND, OHIO: Game Four

COACH BROWN: What a game. I tell you what, first thing I want to acknowledge is our crowd. I thought our crowd was terrific tonight. They were into it the entire ballgame and they really gave us some juice down the stretch so that was great. The whole season, the whole playoff run, they've been great, but tonight especially down the stretch they were huge.
I mean, I had so many guys contribute tonight. It was a total team effort. Obviously Daniel Gibson, he played well, he did a nice job attacking the rim, he did a nice job trying to be the aggressor on both ends of the floor, and it paid off well.
I thought Larry Hughes, I thought his minutes were really special, because he gave us a good start and we weren't going into this game one-man short or down. In terms of having him as our starter, he gutted it out and went out there and started the ballgame for us and did some nice things and it allowed us to play our normal way with our rotation.
I thought Eric Snow was huge. Eric Snow sat for 46 minutes and 55 seconds or something like that, and I called his number, and, you know, if you're 27, 28 years old, you can do that. But he's a veteran, who at times needs to get himself going, but tonight he came in and he made a huge play for us coming up with that loose ball. And then he stepped up and not taking a shot in four, five hours, since the beginning of the game, he knocks down a free-throw to stretch it to four. Not only that he comes in and their first play they went to Tayshaun, and he did a nice job on Tayshaun and we get a turnover out of it. So Eric's minutes were big, huge.
Drew Gooden, especially in the second half, again, you're not stopping a guy like Rasheed Wallace. The only thing you can do with a guy like Rasheed Wallace, Richard Hamilton, Chauncey Billups, Tayshaun Prince, the only thing you can do with those guys is make them work for their shots, and I thought Drew was good in the second half. I thought he did a nice job making Rasheed Wallace work for his shots and, again, you can't stop him, you've just got to make him work, and Drew did his job by making him work. And then he hit some big baskets. He spaced the floor and waited for them to double-team LeBron, found the open hole, we found him and he knocked down the shots.
The last guy obviously I want to talk about is LeBron. What a huge night. You know, we had nice production off the bench, Drew put some points up on the board for us, and, you know, we got to the fourth quarter and then he did his thing, took over. Two games in a row where he's taken over that fourth quarter and put us on his big, broad shoulders and said come along for the ride, and two games in a row we went for the ride and he carried us home. Terrific ballgame by him and it was big of him to step to that free-throw line and knock those two free-throws down to seal the deal.
We said before the game that Rip and Chauncey were going to come out and be aggressive, and they were, and that's what got them going. Both those guys had a tremendous game.

Q. Coach, fourth quarter, LeBron matched up with Chauncey, and Chauncey was going for a point, how huge was that?
COACH BROWN: It was big. The one thing we felt we could do match-up-wise is we could put LeBron James on Chauncey, because LeBron has guarded point guards in the past. We put him on them actually often because of his length and size, and then if we want to switch pick-and-rolls, we can do that because it switches him as a big guy on to a power forward a lot of times. So it was huge for us but not only that, our other guys had to defend, too, and they did a nice job of doing that.

Q. Coach, it seems like every third quarter of every game it seems like the Cavaliers go through a lull. Can you explain from what you're looking at what's causing that and what you can do to remedy that?
COACH BROWN: It happened twice against New Jersey and it's happened three times here, but I don't think it's a norm for us. You know, New Jersey is a good team, Detroit is a good team, and the games have all been close and they have veterans, each one of those clubs have veterans on their team that have an inner will that they're not going to give in, and a lot of times that, you know, you want to jump on a team at the beginning of the second half to set a tone. That team is really good at it. Not doing anything tricky, not running any new plays, just stepping up their aggression on both ends of the floor and, you know, we're not responding well to it.
Only thing we can do is keep going through the experience of it, and hope that we don't get hammered bad enough to lose a ballgame in that third quarter. But the one thing we have to continue to try to do on the offensive end of the floor is we can't settle for jump shots, we have to move the ball, force the issue by attacking the rim and, again, putting the onus on the referee as to whether or not they are going to call a block or a charge.

Q. Coach, the end result to the first four games of this year is identical to the first four last year against Detroit. Can you talk about mentally and maturity, how this team is different as opposed to last year.
COACH BROWN: Like I said before, defensively we're a little bit better and offensively we're a little bit better. We still got a ways to go on both ends of the floor but we feel like we've made progress, and the last couple of ballgames I think we scored over 90 points in the last two games, and I don't think that's something we did at all last year against these guys, and if we can score some points and continue to defend the way that we're defending, we're going to give ourselves a chance, especially down the stretch if it's close because we have a guy like LeBron.
But the confidence is there because we've been through this situation with this team but we're a little bit better than we were last year.

Q. Coach, you talked about the difference between the third and fourth quarter, what was LeBron doing to flip that switch?
COACH BROWN: He's a guy that plays a lot of minutes, and it's a big load on him, and the one thing that I have to make sure I keep doing is I got to make sure I keep spreading the wealth offensively, I've got to go to other guys and let LeBron get his in transition or on the backside instead of getting it on the front side a lot, and sometimes I get in the habit of giving him the ball on the front side, and they load up and we end up shooting a lot of jump shots. So in the fourth quarter he made up his mind. I remember hearing David Wesley telling him -- a lot of times when you hear your teammates tell you this, it kicks in sometimes better, but I remember David saying to LeBron at the end of the third quarter, "Somebody needs to get in the paint." And I thought I heard LeBron say "okay," and from that point on he was aggressively driving the basketball, and when they did that, they collapsed and he made the right pass, we moved the ball, we had random offenses where we moved the ball to one side or the other and next thing you know, Z pops, or Drew pops, and we hit them for a baby jump shot. And it was pretty to watch, but a lot of it is due to the double-teams that LeBron draws and zoning and things like that.

Q. Coach, Flip said he saw the Drew technical foul as an emotional turning point, did you see it in the same way?
COACH BROWN: It could have been. Drew is an emotional guy and usually when he's into the game, he's very good. And, you know, from that point on, you know, we as a team, especially Drew, turned it up a notch on the defensive end of the floor.
It could have been. I had other people mention that to me, too, but, I don't know.

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