In a world separated by Bull Durham interviews and 24/7 sites ready to pick apart any interviewing misstep, there's rarely anything worth hearing about in an interview. But Doug Collins is an unusually candid coach and this team tends to back him regardless, so I checked out a bunch of interviews and pulled the good stuff from them. They talked a lot about not executing well, needing to shoot better, and how good the Heat are defensively.
There's two guys usually that will carry the load in scoring...that's why we've got to score the ball. With all that's said, we've got to score the ball. At the end of the day, we're not gonna shut Miami down.
I gave Jrue a hug after game two that day as he came off the court and I said I love everything that you're doing.
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Do I want to win the games? Absolutely...But the growth of these young guys for the franchise, that's what we're looking at. I just think that right now, standing here, I know that the seeds have been laid, the culture has been laid for this franchise to become an elite franchise. We've got to grow up. And this is helping us grow up.
When you go through these experiences, whether or not you're playing good or bad, it's growth. Just because of the caliber of the team we're going up against. You learn a lot from them, or you should learn a lot from them. When I came in, we were playing against Detroit in the playoffs a few times. I learned so much from that team and I learned so much from Tayshaun, Rip, and Chauncey that's helped me improve over the years in the league.
(Mike Preston tells Jrue to scratch his chin around the 2:46 mark. It was the cutest)
[To the people who don't believe in us] I don't have anything to say. We just have to go out there and prove it.
We know that once we get the ball inside, they're gonna pack it in. We have to just look to kick it to the short corners or out to the three-point line and hope that guys make shots.
Re: Joel Anthony blocking his shots
They were definitely coming over early and cheating to spots. On the weak side, the guards were pinching in on the bigs and making sure we couldn't hit the other big. It's just a matter of finding guys and getting guys in the right spots and we'll be fine.
To sum up, they recognize how good the Heat are, know they have to play near-perfect ball to beat them, but returning home to play in front of the WFC fans will give them a boost. Everybody's confident in a bounce-back game. Whether or not that results in a win, we'll find out tonight.