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NBA FINALS: MAGIC v LAKERSJune 4, 2009Stan Van GundyLOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA: Game One Q. What's the situation with your point guard and how tough a decision has it been to play Jameer or not play him? STAN VAN GUNDY: Well, we're going to dress him today and probably play him. In some ways it's not a difficult decision because it just comes down to trying to make the decision that we think gives us the best chance to win. The easiest decision, the one that would create no problems, would have been to not play him. He would have understood, wouldn't have upset our rotation or any of our players, and I wouldn't open myself up to any criticism not playing him. But in the end, we just think he's ready to go, think he can put some pressure on their defense, and we think he'll get better as the series goes on. We'll have to wait and see, but that's what we're going to do. Q. Twice said yesterday that you guys have been fueled throughout the playoffs with people picking against you. I'm just wondering, what do you think about President Obama picking the Lakers in six? STAN VAN GUNDY: I can honestly say I had absolutely no thoughts on that whatsoever (smiling). I hope President Obama -- by the way, I know what's going on with our economy and overseas, and I hope he's got a lot more important things to be concerned about. I hope he's not spending too much time thinking about the NBA Finals. Q. I'm curious, are you intimidated at all by Phil Jackson or his résumé? STAN VAN GUNDY: What's he going to do to me? Q. Well, his résumé in these championship games is pretty good. STAN VAN GUNDY: He's a great, great coach, but intimidated? I'd be intimidated, I guess, if Dwight Howard or one of these NBA players threatened to kick my ass, I'd be intimidated. Phil sitting down there on his chair doesn't intimidate me, no. (Laughter). Q. You talked about the decision about playing Jameer and if you had decided not to, you wouldn't have opened yourself up, but what were the positives and what were the reasons that made you make that decision? STAN VAN GUNDY: I said at the beginning of the week I was going to watch him two days in practice. I thought he was okay on Tuesday. I thought he was a little bit better yesterday. We watched him last week. He's made progress every time I've seen him. I thought he's looked a little bit better. So we're going to play him. It was a tough decision in this sense: I'll tell you what, it was really, really tough to take two great veteran guys and tell Ty Lue that he was going to be on the inactive list. That was very difficult for me, and to tell Anthony Johnson, at least at the beginning here, that I was going to play Jameer ahead of him, when we've made it all the way to The Finals without Jameer. Anthony has played all 19 games and had been a big part of what we've done on a personal level. And on a coaching level the appreciation I have for what those guys have done, that's a very, very difficult thing to do. Like I said, the easiest thing would have been just not to play him. I mean, I wouldn't have had to have those conversations; Jameer would have understood. But it's not about what's easiest, it's trying to do what you think is best for your team and what's right. Q. And I know that you don't have a firm idea in your head, but just ballpark, minutes? STAN VAN GUNDY: I don't have any idea on that at all. I mean, we'll see. We'll see how long we go with it, how many minutes he plays, whether we stick with him. We'll have to see when he gets out there. Q. In your previous visits here, have you found yourself ever looking at the celebrities, ever noticing Jack, that sort of thing? STAN VAN GUNDY: No. I'm not really -- look, and it happened to me the other night, there's one person in the entire world that I've ever been awestruck by and been sort of like a little kid celebrity-wise, and that's Oscar Robertson. I've met him three times in my life. He was presenting the trophy the other night in Orlando. I'm still like a little kid around him. Everybody else is no big deal. Oscar Robertson is the big one for me, and if he were there, I'd probably get caught watching him a little bit. Q. The decision-making process on Jameer, did management have any input in this? STAN VAN GUNDY: No, Otis and I talked about it, but Otis, more than maybe anybody, Otis is great about -- he really stays out of the coaching end of it and lets me make the decisions. He's supportive of whatever we do. We talked about it, but our main conversation was, you know, a while ago on whether -- I guess his part in it was if it was even okay to make that decision, if we felt good enough about Jameer that it was okay to play him if we felt like he could help us. We had to get to that point first where we were confident we weren't endangering his health. So he certainly had big input in that. He left the decision actually whether we were going to play him or not up to us. But he had big input in whether or not we would even allow him that decision to be made. Q. Just want to make sure that I hear right, Jameer will be your backup and will be ahead of Anthony Johnson then? Is that the way you're looking at it? STAN VAN GUNDY: Right now my plan is going into the game that whenever it was that we take Rafer out of the game, that we'll put Jameer into the game. Q. If he is healthy but just plays poorly, is this going to be a game decision or -- STAN VAN GUNDY: Well, there's varying levels -- I don't want him to be on a short leash, either. We've made the decision to play him. Anybody on our team could go out and not play real well, it doesn't mean I'm not going to play him the next time their turn comes up. It's not going to be he had three bad minutes, we're not going to play him again. The guy hasn't played in four months. We're going to stick with him. How long will be his stamina out there, we'll evaluate it game to game, but I'm not looking saying he has to have a great game to be our backup in Game 2 or anything like that. Q. I had a question for you about Jameer: Was some of the thought process possibly see what you have in Game 1 with the chemistry that you built over this playoffs enough to beat the Lakers and see if there's a loss? Was that part of the thinking, or -- STAN VAN GUNDY: Well, we would have gone either way. We could have just played it out. We haven't been afraid to make changes. That's the one thing. I mean, maybe I'm just stupid, but we started J.J. for eight straight playoff games the entire Boston series, and then he only played once in the Cleveland series because of match-ups and things like that. I mean, we're just trying to put the people out there we think give us the best chance to win and the best match-ups based on where we think guys are. It's really that simple. Q. Why do you think Jameer has had such good games against the Lakers this year? And what sort of match-up maybe do you see there? STAN VAN GUNDY: I don't know, it's only two games out of 82. It's not like the guy has played ten games against them. He had two good games, and they were very good games, but I don't look at the film and say, he's got some tremendous match-up advantage, or the way they play isn't good against him or anything else. He had two good games. It's not enough of a sample to really draw any big conclusions from. Q. What impact do you see that Marcin Gortat can make in this Finals? STAN VAN GUNDY: Well, Marcin has had a very good season for us, very good playoffs for us. I think that he has been able to play big minutes when called upon. Dwight was suspended for a game, Dwight has had some foul trouble, particularly in the Cleveland series. I think he's come through in a big way any time we've called on him. The other advantage is even in the short minutes when we're resting Dwight three or four minutes, he's able to get himself going quickly, so we couldn't be happier with the way he's played for us throughout the playoffs and probably how much impact he has on this series will depend on how many minutes he gets. We would hope that wouldn't be a huge number of minutes, only because that would mean Dwight is staying out of foul trouble, as well. But if we need big minutes out of him, we have all the confidence in the world that he'll be able to produce for us. End of FastScripts |
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