Antoine Wright:
On suddenly playing 40 minutes.
Exhuasting. Coach has stuck with me and told me to just continue to work and my chance would come.
Carlisle has said nobody has grabbed the SG spot by the horns....
Whatever happens at that two position, guys just have to come in ready, focused, and know what the game plan is.
How does it feel to be back to .500?
It feels good to be .500, but now we have the Lakers.
It was your sons 4th birthday and you had a career night scoring 24 in 40 minutes. Do you think he brought you good luck?
I don't know if it's good for me because now he's going to be so excited and I'm tired.
Rick Carlisle:
We were getting stops and rebounds [late] which was a big problem early in the game. Then Terry and Kidd made play after play. JET got to the basket - he hit jumpers. Kidd hit two huge threes. Our veterans willed us to a win - is what happened. You've got to give credit to them.
Antoine Wright played tremendously well. As much as this looks like an iny-miny-miny-moe game with the two guard spot, there's logic to it just in regard to the defensive matchups coming into the game. We had a lot of respect for Marquis Daniels and felt he would be the best guy to guard him. He had a great defensive and offensive game. Very happy for him.
We really needed to get this win somehow. We were having a lot of diffculty early. We gave up 13 offensive rebounds in the first half -- I think 8 in the first six and a half minutes which is unheard of. We'd become a better rebouding team, but they were long rebounds and Indiana was just quicker to the ball.
The second half we talked about getting the tempo reasonable for us and working the game back and staying with it. That's what our guys did. We were hoping to cut into the lead a little bit earlier than the last few minutes of the fourth, but whatever you can to do to get a win in this situation, when you're trying to get back to .500, is whatever you have to do.
They're not all Rembrandts.