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NBA ALL-STAR WEEKEND

February 17, 2008

Doc Rivers

NEW ORLEANS, LOUISIANA

Q. Can you talk about that stretch and when you went small, and the fact that you let Ray take some of those shots?
DOC RIVERS: We looked at it two ways: It wasn't nothing brilliant I did, but we couldn't go big. They went big with Dirk and Stoudemire and Duncan. And so I'm thinking well, we can't go big, so let's go the other way. We went small, and we just told our guys, let's spread the floor. Let's try to take them off the dribble, and draw and kick and look for shots. So it worked out good for us.
We were obviously concerned on the rebounds. LeBron helped us out with rebounds, because during the timeout we talked about that. We said, listen, they're going to stay big, we're going to stay small. It's a game of chicken, basically. And we need all you guys on the glass. And that's what we did.
I thought they did a nice job. Obviously, this is an offensive game. But I thought our guards did a really nice job of trying on Tim, every time he called it on the post, making him give it up and then kind of scrambling it out.

Q. You must be hoping Ray raised a little bit of the level for the road trip out west, right?
DOC RIVERS: I don't think it hurts Ray. It was pretty nice, you know. It was funny, because they get two or three offensive rebounds. If the timeout doesn't happen, if the play stopped, I was probably going to take Ray out and put Bosh in, because I was getting worried about the rebounds. And right before we were about to do it, Ray makes a three, and I decided I think it would be smart to keep Ray in. You've seen Ray, when he makes one, there's usually two or three coming behind it.

Q. Can you just talk about the whole weekend.
DOC RIVERS: Great, great weekend. You know, I've been to a lot, I played in one, obviously, and I've been to a couple more as a fan. New Orleans should be extremely proud of the way this thing was run this week. Everything was organized. Very little chaos. You got the flavor of the city with the jazz. It was just a terrific weekend. I had my kids here, as I talked to you guys before, and they had the time of their lives. They really did. And more, not just because they were allowed to meet the players, just from the whole event. So I don't know if this weekend could have come off any better for our league.

Q. Just as a coaching experience for the first time?
DOC RIVERS: Well, the whole key for me was staying out of the way for the most part. We did actually run some ATO's. When you have Jason Kidd on your basketball team, you can almost throw up anything, and he's going to execute it pretty well for you. You know, usually when you run an ATO, they run it once. Those two passes Ray scored on, they ran that play two, three, four times over and over again, and they were getting better at it as it was going. So I was really impressed. But really Jason got that together.

Q. Just talk about, you played in the All-Star Game and now coaching it. That transition goes from where it's a show at the beginning and then suddenly it becomes competitive, what happens?
DOC RIVERS: Yeah, you knew it was coming, you just didn't know when. And you knew with us having the lead, you knew they were going to make the run. So we had the idea when the game was going to start, because we could see it when they started catching up to us. So if it was close and we had the lead. Guys from New Orleans was going to try to take the game over, and Chris Paul really got them back in the game, I thought with his energy and his play. And then we just made big shots down the stretch.
You know, listen, the game hasn't changed. It's a make or miss league. It always will be. And Ray made shots, LeBron made plays, we won the game.

Q. Can you talk about Lebron's performance?
DOC RIVERS: He's fun to coach, I can tell you that. He's just so powerful. Does everything. You know, I told him after he came off the first stint, I said, We're going to have to play you at four a lot tonight, are you good with that? And he said, You can play me anywhere. And after watching and playing and being next to him, I agree. He's just a powerful player with great speed and great feel. And that's tough to teach. You don't.

Q. Last year about this time Chauncey Billups was saying that the effort of the East team was not good at all and not impressive. How would you rate this year's effort?
DOC RIVERS: I thought it was good. I felt good as good as you're going to feel going into these games, because you could hear them talking about -- you know, my big rah-rah speech was I asked, what was the score from last year? They didn't know it, but they knew they lost pretty handily. Jason Kidd talked about it openly. I heard Chauncey talking about it. Joe Johnson talked about it. They lost in a big way last year. And I don't care what type of game it is. They remember that.
And I thought our guys came out to compete. They wanted to win the game. They talked about it openly. As a coach, that's what you want them talking about.

Q. Were you disappointed at all that Ray wasn't named MVP?
DOC RIVERS: No, no. You know, it's funny when you're coaching these games, you didn't know what LeBron had. When they read off his numbers, I didn't know he had done all that. I didn't know he scored that many points, honestly. So Lebron's that type of player. It would have been nice for Ray, too, no doubt about that. But it was great for Ray in this. He was not an original pick, and he should have been. He's the guy that had sacrificed more for our basketball team offensively coming to it so we can win. I thought he should have got more credit for that when the original votes were out. He didn't. Didn't get down about it. Came in, was finally put on the team and played the way he played, so I was really proud of him.

End of FastScripts

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