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NBA EASTERN CONFERENCE FINALS: CELTICS v MAGIC

May 24, 2010

Stan Van Gundy

BOSTON, MASSACHUSETTS: Game Four

Orlando Magic 96
Boston Celtics 92

Q. Can you talk about the desperation and the purpose that you guys played with throughout it seemed like?
STAN VAN GUNDY: I don't think we played desperate, but I do think we played hard and we fought. I thought in the first half we played well. In the second half, in overtime, 15 turnovers. We didn't play well. But we did keep fighting and fighting and fighting.
That's what it took to get an overtime win. But we held them under 40% in the second half. Allen hit some huge shots late in overtime. Other than that, we guarded them pretty well. It's the first time I think in the series we've actually made it tough on them.

Q. Coach, can you talk about Jameer making plays off the high screen-and-roll maybe more than he had in the first three games.
STAN VAN GUNDY: I thought he was really aggressive. Obviously, you know, at times he got down too deep. He did turn it over a lot. He's got a lot of guts. I was sure the shot that we had in regulation to go up two was going to go. That's the best look he had late. The threes were actually tougher shows. He got a great look I thought with 15, 16 seconds. I thought that was going down.
He's a tough competitive guy. I thought he played with great aggressiveness and fought very, very hard.

Q. Can you assess Dwight's performance tonight.
STAN VAN GUNDY: I thought Dwight was great. We needed and continue to need -- we need 15-plus rebounds from him. Plus he scored. But we need the rebounds every single night to be able to win. Obviously a huge performance from him tonight.

Q. Also just the fire and emotion he showed?
STAN VAN GUNDY: You know, I think our guys, you know, played very hard tonight. So did their guys. I thought we got into the fight. And even when they came back and took the lead, we were down going into the fourth quarter. Our guys -- as I said today, I think the hardest thing is like when you go behind in a game like this. We didn't go behind by much, thankfully. When you go behind and you're down 3-0, what you're fighting against is that human nature to just sort of let it go.
Our guys didn't do that. They stayed in the fight. We made some big plays, and did what we had to do to get a very, very tough win.

Q. Stan, obviously you needed one win to keep the thing going. It's a series now. Did you get a sense from your guys that they weren't ready to let it go?
STAN VAN GUNDY: Yeah, I think that's what happened. Again, I've seen it a lot of times. If you don't think you can win the series, a lot of times people say, you can't think about winning the series. You have to win one game. I've never really bought into that. I've never been down 3-0 as a head coach. I've been 3-1. Stuff like that. If you don't believe you're going win the series, then it's just too easy to let go. Yeah, you've got to play it one game at a time. But you have to have a belief somewhere that you can win the series. Otherwise there's just not enough to sustain you and to keep you going in a game.

Q. Coach, yesterday you talked about not being able to draw a second defender anywhere offensively. Were you able to get that a little bit more?
STAN VAN GUNDY: A little bit more because Jameer was driving the ball hard and getting down deep. We still have to find a way to cut the turnovers against a very good defense. But we said there's never going to be a time where it's easy to score on these guys. So you're going to have to do it with your defense and rebounding.
I thought our defense in the second half and overtime was what gave us a chance to win tonight.

Q. Stan, we've seen Dwight like this before, where points and rebounds don't matter; it's his will. It seemed to be there all game.
STAN VAN GUNDY: Yeah, I think his will was very, very strong. He told me right before the game, bent over to me on the bench and said, "Look, I may need a rest earlier than usual tonight. I'm going to go as hard as I can and get one." So we did rest him earlier than usual.
Then in the second half at one point in the fourth quarter he said he needed one, and I said no. I said "No. Thanks for going hard, but no."
You know, his will was very, very strong tonight.

Q. Coach, can you kind of expand on what you were talking about today about how one win maybe can change the psychology.
STAN VAN GUNDY: Well, it obviously does. Now you're going home with some confidence that you can win, and certainly an understanding of how hard you have to play and how hard you have to fight to do that. And we still had to go to overtime to do it. So you've got to understand what it's all about.
Like I said, at some point somebody is going to come from 3-0 down and win a series. The only thing I knew for sure was it would start by winning Game 4.
I'm not much smarter than you are, Mike. I am smarter, but not by much. But I figured that one out. You have to win Game 4. Just like you figured out this was a must-win today.

Q. (No microphone).
STAN VAN GUNDY: He figured out it was a must-win. I think all on his own. I don't think Brian helped him with that. You helped him with that?

Q. (No microphone).
STAN VAN GUNDY: We were much better off the start tonight. I thought that all of our guys came out real hard. But I thought Matt gave us a good lift at the beginning of the game. But everybody played real well. It was an interesting game, because the first half was an offensive half. And then the second half was just, you know, defense and fighting and everything else. It was like two different games.
However it happened, just happy to have the win and to be going home.

Q. Stan, can you talk about the decision to go with Brandon Bass and what led to you that.
STAN VAN GUNDY: I think in the first two games of the series the lineup with Marcin and Dwight was pretty good. And then it was really ineffective the last game. Obviously, I think that our thinking was that our problem had been our energy. And Brandon I think brings a lot of energy to the game.
So that was really the decision there.

Q. Stan, J.J. hit two big threes.
STAN VAN GUNDY: Two big threes and he just played so hard. You have those guys that have been with you awhile and that you really gain a trust in their -- as much as anything, in their competitiveness and what they will bring to the game. And J.J. is one of those guys. He turned it over some and everything else, but you just know that you're going to get everything he has every single night.
So I have a lot of trust in him.

Q. Coach, is there any sense to which a longer series favors a younger team?
STAN VAN GUNDY: No. I don't think that has anything to do with anything. Right now a longer series favors us (laughing) because the only way it can be a short series is with them winning. I know this at this point, the shorter the series certainly the worse it is for us.
So it does favor us in that regard. We have to get to Game 7, obviously, to win it.

Q. You talked a lot about Jameer. Five of his assists went for dunks, three went for threes, one for a lay-up. When he's driving and kicking like that how does that change things for you?
STAN VAN GUNDY: Well, I mean, clearly that's -- he created the vast majority of our offense tonight. I don't think there's any doubt about that. So we put a lot on his shoulders. He responded extremely well. I'm sure Boston will make some adjustments. We'll have to find some other things. We can't put it all on him on Wednesday. But he was tremendous tonight.

Q. Stan, I just wanted to know what you were thinking, what was going through your head when Boston got the ball at the end of regulation and elected not to call time-out?
STAN VAN GUNDY: I thought it was a good move on Doc's part, because, you know, number one, he knows he's got Jameer on the court with five fouls, and we're a little bit smaller. But we did a good job, I think. We weren't at that point -- it was going to be anybody but Paul at that point. We were going to come at him and try to make somebody else shoot the ball. He had been tremendous all night.
I was ready -- we were ready, had he called time-out. But I wasn't real surprised he left it on the floor. I thought it was a pretty good decision on his part.
THE MODERATOR: Thank you.

End of FastScripts

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