Avery Johnson
Avery Johnson
Avery Johnsonis an American basketball coach who is currently the head coach of the Alabama Crimson Tide men's basketball team. Johnson spent 16 years in the National Basketball Association as a player, and subsequently served as the head coach of two NBA teams: the Dallas Mavericks and New Jersey/Brooklyn Nets. He led the Mavericks to their first NBA Finals appearance and to three consecutive 50+ win seasons. During his playing days, Johnson was known as the "Little General" for his...
ProfessionBasketball Player
Date of Birth25 March 1969
CityNew Orleans, LA
As we move forward, and especially in the playoffs, he's going to get their best defender. It'll be good to see if we've made some progress there.
Stack was solid, man. Stack was energized. He was ready to play. He was right in his comfort zone tonight. That's what we need from him on both ends. Obviously, he scored a little bit, but nobody will talk about how he battled those guys on defense.
I'm going to stop saying every time we have games like this that I failed. I've been waiting 79 games to get some internal leadership. I haven't gotten it yet.
He's got to play more minutes and be more responsible. That's why it's team game. You can have a 10th man in the starting lineup. We have guys one through 12 that we feel good about putting in games.
In my opinion, looking at that game and looking at some of our recent All-Star games, the game was much more serious. Now, they still scored a lot of points. But the games were a little bit more physical from what I can tell.
We're disappointed with the way we finished the game. Our defense wasn't very good tonight. We gave up 65 points in the second half. We had a lot of things go wrong defensively.
The guys really tried to get T-Mac the ball. The ball just didn't go in. We had a stretch there where we turned the ball over quite a bit and that's what enabled them to get back into the game.
We couldn't get any space between us and them, and they didn't quit. And then we could only make five of our last eight free throws. Just a very disappointing night.
Obviously, this is a very disappointing loss. We felt we had a chance to win this game, but they executed better than we did down the stretch. We battled, we fought, this was a playoff atmosphere. We wish we would have been able to match their intensity down the stretch, but we didn't. They were in the bounce-back mode and they bounced back.
That's the key, play at our tempo. We don't play as fast as we used to, but we're at our best when we get out in transition. That's what we want to do when we get a chance. That's when we feel pretty comfortable.