Richard Jefferson
Richard Jefferson
Richard Allen Jeffersonis an American professional basketball player for the Cleveland Cavaliers of the National Basketball Association. He was a member of the United States men's national basketball team at the 2003 Tournament of the Americas and the Athens 2004 Summer Olympics, and won the NBA championship as a member of the Cleveland Cavaliers in 2016...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionBasketball Player
Date of Birth21 June 1980
CityLos Angeles, CA
CountryUnited States of America
There's a lot of ups and downs to every playoff series. We didn't really get dominated. It was a game that was back and forth. They got (a questionable foul) call with 0.9 seconds to go that put them on the free throw line. That was the difference in the game, 0.9 seconds. So we weren't that far off.
I tried to get my career high. J-Kidd, he was more going for NBA history. I'm going for personal history. NBA history is another thing.
Everybody was to blame. You have a chance to win on the road, and the last 10 possessions, you don't get many stops. That's what it comes down to. Forget everything that happened the first 40 minutes of the game. The last 10, 15 possessions, that really determines how this game adds up.
That's a tough way to start a trip, but hey it's one of those nights. Vince goes down with foul trouble, then got a little bit hurt and couldn't get into a rhythm.
A.J. has never done that before. He had a great game. To act like that's going to be the norm over the series, I think everybody knows that's not going to be the case. He got hot. He hit some big shots for them.
Just because he had an off night when all eyes were on our team doesn't mean that we have to question what we do and what we did to get here.
You might struggle on the road or you might lose a home game or two, but this is new to us, and new to me.
My situation was pretty easy. My high school is a Nike school; I went the University of Arizona. It's not like it was bad choice, or I went there just because it was a Nike school. North Carolina, Duke, Arizona and Kentucky are all Nike schools, so if you are going to a top program, most of them are Nike.
It was important for us to defend, make them play half court and limit them to one shot. It was an all around great effort by every player.
Some nights, things just click. It's a combination of good defense. But they also had some good looks. They had some shots that they normally hit. You combine that with good defense and it was just a tough night (for Phoenix).
The ball was moving, to tell you the truth. It was drive, drive, pass, pass and then somebody had an open shot and we just knocked them down.
He hasn't lost a step, let that be known.
It felt really good after (Wednesday's) practice. Then I tried to do more stuff Thursday when we were still in San Antonio and it went backwards a little bit. . . . It was my fault, I tried to do too much.
Mike is such a great player, such a clutch player. I joke with him, because he doesn't jump very high and he's not very fast, yet he's still one of the most effective guys in the NBA because he's so intelligent. He knows the game, and he knows what it takes to get it done.