280 Quotes by Maurice Cheeks

Sometimes you have to work with what you have.

Certainly you have to make adjustments on the offensive end. When you have a player like that in the fourth quarter, you have a tendency to look for him and realize he has that ability to take over a game. On the defensive end, he creates some turnovers for us and easy baskets. And we haven't gotten as many with him out of the lineup.

I talked to him about it before the game. He had about 11 charges during camp and he had three today. The fact is, he played an offensive game, he plays a defensive game, he does a lot of things to impress you.

Certainly when I got the Portland job, there wasn't as much hoopla as there is here, ... I've spent time here. I've lived here. I grew up basically here. There's going to be a little bit more hoopla than there would be someplace else.

Sometimes, when you play in a game of this magnitude, it can wear on you a little bit. I don?t think the guys came out there intentionally to be a step slower. I thought our effort was pretty good. They were just better.

It certainly will give us a boost to get ready for the second half. We needed a boost to get us back feeling good about ourselves and playing against a team like San Antonio, the defending champions, gives you a chance to feel good about yourselves.

Sometimes, I'm a little soft-spoken, and sometimes I yell a little bit. They have to figure out when I'm going to yell, when I'm not going to yell. I think there's a happy medium. I have to find out the little things about players' personalities, and they have to find out about mine as well.

Hopefully, it's not a lingering thing, not a major problem. We need him on the floor, we want him on the court as quickly as possible.

I thought down the stretch of the game, when we needed those two guys to score the points, that?s what they did. That?s what they have to do. We got to the penalty at a certain point, Allen continued to drive the ball, and Chris had wide open jump shots because of it.