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NBA EASTERN CONFERENCE FINALS: MAGIC v CAVALIERS

May 25, 2009

Mike Brown

ORLANDO, FLORIDA: Practice Day

Q. Focus a little bit more to the offensive end of the floor at this point the way you guys have struggled on that side for the last six quarters?
COACH BROWN: I mean, we have to pay attention, I think, on both sides. I don't think you can give one side more attention than the other. If you do, the way our team is set up, we should be fine.

Q. You guys have the best record in the regular season. It is a marathon. Playoff situations can be peaky. You had trouble on the bench. Sasha plays one night, Szczerbiak the next two nights. What question marks as the coaching staff do you have around what personnel and how do you play them Tuesday night?
COACH BROWN: Sasha played last night and the game before, so Sasha played two nights in a row. We won the first game when played, so I went back to him.
You know, I said it before that with Sasha, Gib and Wally, at most we can play two of those three. Guys during the playoffs because we are playing Delonte heavy minutes and LeBron and Mo heavy minutes, we will probably only be able to play one of those guys.
In order to let one of them try to get a rhythm, we got to give them a chance to be out on the floor. We can't let one guy run for three minutes and then say, Oh, my gosh, he's not doing well unless he is really doing bad and then go with somebody else because then it chops up these guy's time on the floor which does not allow them nor the guys they are out there with to get a rhythm.
So it is just going to have me to keep my feel. If I feel Sasha is the guy, I will play him. If I feel Wally is the guy, I will play him. If I feel like Gib is the guy, I will play him. Really, it is not rocket science. It is just a matter of feel based on time and score and who did well in the last game, if I thought somebody did well.

Q. When Dwight Howard goes out with foul trouble, does the whole game plan change and you can decide that day you guys got a whole different look?
COACH BROWN: You can. You can if he does pick up fouls and he is out of the game. But he's -- again, you tried something and then you go to something else. If that doesn't work, you go to something else.
But I don't think you can go in the game -- I don't know anybody that goes in the game with a script in their head and they follow that script to a tee. I think you go in a game with your script, and I always have that. I have my minute sheet that I go into every game with.
But I don't think I've ever really followed it to the tee one time in my short career as a head coach. So you have to -- that's what coaching is about, making adjustments on the fly, coaching on the fly and doing it by a feel without trying to do something too soon where it will upset the rhythm of the team, if you have any type of rhythm at all.

Q. The script got thrown away when Mo Williams got injured. He thinks it was a cheap shot. As a coaching staff, did you look at it and think it was a cheap shot by Anthony Johnson?
COACH BROWN: I have not seen the game feed -- the television feed or the other T.V. feed. The only feed I saw so far is I saw the high-angle feed, the coach's feed. Obviously I watched it again and again, and you can't tell from the feed that we have because it is from one camera that's at a certain angle.
I'm just hoping the league looks at it. The officials looked at it and they made the call, and I'm sure the league will look at it and they'll make a decision because I know they'll look at it with a T.V. feed and with replays and from different angles.
So whatever decision they make, you have to live with. But it was a tough -- it was a tough play or a tough time for Mo because I thought we were starting to get a little rhythm and play some good basketball at that time when he went out and missed some minutes because of it.

Q. After three games, is your bigger concern getting your guys -- your shooters going or defending Orlando? What's the best way?
COACH BROWN: I don't think you can say one side is better than the other because Orlando shoots and scores the basketball so well.
We as a staff have to keep figuring out how we can put our team in the best position to cause Orlando to work as hard as possible, getting looks at the rim. And the guys have to keep giving effort. And in the same breath, we have to keep trying to help put them in position on offense for them to get some looks.
I thought we had a couple looks last night that didn't go down that normally go down for us. I thought we got -- especially with LeBron attacking the way he did. He attacked so well last night. He got to the free-throw line for us, and I thought we had our chances.
Dwight, you got to give him credit because he stepped up and shot double-digit free-throw attempts last night. He shot 80 percent from the free-throw line. You are not going to be able to take away everything. If you get the type of effort and focus that I feel we got after watching the tape from our team, sometimes you got to just get ready to more than on to the next game if you have the loss.

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