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NBA EASTERN CONFERENCE FINALS: MAGIC v CAVALIERSMay 25, 2009Mo WilliamsORLANDO, FLORIDA: Practice Day Q. Were you trying to say that they don't deserve the respect? MO WILLIAMS: Not that much. Q. Why not? MO WILLIAMS: Because we the best team in basketball. Q. So how much respect do they deserve? MO WILLIAMS: They deserve respect. They are a good team. But we are the best team in basketball. I don't feel that they've had to adjust us one time in the series. Q. The shot you took from Anthony Johnson, is this something that we can see some retaliation? MO WILLIAMS: No, not at all. Not at all. Q. Why not? MO WILLIAMS: That's not the way I play the game of basketball. The game of basketball is not played with throwing punches, throwing elbows. It's with being physical; but being physical the right way is holding a man up on a cut, not letting him get a good post position or sending him to the screen, physical that way, hard five going to the basket but not opening wounds up and sending people out of the game. That's not the way you play the game. But, no, no retaliation on my part. Q. So if you are the best team in basketball, going ahead in the next couple games, is it an almost guarantee that you guys are going to win this series? MO WILLIAMS: Yeah, yeah. We are down 1-2. But there is nobody on this team and definitely not myself that says we are not going to win this series. Yeah, it is going to be tough. We know that. We get this game tomorrow, go home, still got home-court advantage. We don't see ourselves losing 2-3 at home. Q. Why is it they won 10 of the last 14 in this organization? MO WILLIAMS: I don't know. I only played them, what? Four times? Five times? I beat them two out of three times. Q. How do you make them adjust to you if they haven't had to do that yet? MO WILLIAMS: Just play Cleveland Cavaliers basketball, playing Cavaliers basketball. I think Gortat is struggling. We're depending too much on the King. We just have to step up and not worry about letting him make every play for us. There is a reason he is cramping up. There is a reason he has to get in the ice tub. He is doing too much. He is doing too much. That's not the way we have done it all year. That's not the way we've been successful. We've been successful when you don't know where we're coming from, you don't know what we're doing. At the end of the day, we still got No. 23 that you got to worry about when all these other guys are performing well. Q. Are they playing in over their heads, do you think? MO WILLIAMS: No, they're a good basketball team. Don't misconstrue what I'm saying, that they are a bad team. They are not here for no reason. They are one of the best four teams in basketball. All I'm saying is we're the best. Q. Is your head still ringing? How does it feel? MO WILLIAMS: It's still ringing. It's still ringing right now. It was a tough hit. Obviously the adrenalin of the game and the things like that, just me being so angry at the time overendured the pain that I had. But I felt it last night after the game and today. So I mean, I knew it. I knew it. My mom called me, she said, You are going to feel it tomorrow. Q. (Indiscernible). MO WILLIAMS: No, I'm not showing the wound. Q. Did it swell up and close at all? MO WILLIAMS: Yeah, it is a little closed. Look like Larry Holmes. (Laughter). Q. What kind of mental -- you talking about mentally mostly adjustments is what you are talking about? MO WILLIAMS: Yeah. Q. How do you make mental adjustments personally? MO WILLIAMS: Me personally? I'm a strong-minded individual; so me personally, I just -- I'm struggling. I'm struggling with my mental right now because I want to perform well so bad, so I'm searching. I'm searching for answers trying to turn this thing around. But I think having a good night's sleep and having a few hours to think before I come down and talk to you guys, it's just relaxing and kind of get back to what we do as a basketball team: Me pushing the ball, me having the ball in my hand, bringing it down and pushing the ball and seeing what we got. You know, we always got LeBron. We always got LeBron. But I think other guys, we got to step up and help him. It is just the key, you know? And we just not talking about the shots we're getting. We're getting our shots, but we're getting them all off of LeBron. It is basically we give it to him and say, Make a play for yourself or one of us. That was a tough shot for us to make. You know, I think us guys, we got to get him a couple possessions when he comes down and don't have to do anything. He might come down and run to the corner and don't have to move and we get a bucket or a good shot. Even if we don't make it, it is a good shot. Even though Bron is making a lot of shots, they still tough shots. When he is going to the lane, he is going over Dwight Howard and two other guys that's down there. (Indiscernible) or even scoring and them are tough shots. Myself, Delonte, Z, Andy slashing, we haven't seen the Andy slashing and getting easy layups too much. We just got to get back to that. We get back to that on the offensive end. And the defensive end, obviously they create a matchup problem but we are a good defensive team. I'm not worried about that aspect of the game at all. It is just offensive, I think, where the problem lies. Q. When was the last time you faced this level of adversity? MO WILLIAMS: I haven't faced this since I been here. This is the first time I have faced it. It has been great all year. Q. A lot of talk about their length offensively. But defensively their length, speed and versatility, is that causing some issues, too? MO WILLIAMS: Obviously you got to give respect when it's due. Obviously you got to give respect to Dwight Howard. He assists in the paint, assists in the paint, assists in the paint. You got to understand that creates a problem. But the midrange game is open. They can't guard everything. This is every team in the league, you got to give us something defensively if you are going to play a certain way. The way they play defensively, they give up the midrange shot. We just got to step in and make our midrange shot. Instead of shooting a lot of 3s, we need to step in and make those midrange shots. That's what they are giving us, and I don't think we are taking fully advantage of it. Q. Did you feel like you were back in the game before the elbow? MO WILLIAMS: I did actually. I did actually. Q. Do you think he should be suspended? MO WILLIAMS: No. Q. Are you a lightweight or middle? MO WILLIAMS: I'm a middleweight. I'm 185. What's that? I just watched some fights with Mike Tyson. I'm definitely not going to heavyweight. Q. Is it headaches? MO WILLIAMS: My head is ringing. My equilibrium, I threw that. That was off a little bit. My adrenalin and my mental -- like as strong as my mind is, I just told myself -- I use it as motivation. But at the same time, I got hit in the head pretty hard. Y'all know me. I use nothing as an excuse. I never have; never will. Q. (Indiscernible). MO WILLIAMS: I don't know. I got to see a doc. I never had a concussion. I never had anything -- I never really even had to get stitches in a game, you know? So I never been hit in the head before. End of FastScripts |
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