Pat Riley

It's a good bounce-back game. We needed to get out of our system what happened the last couple of games.

We do circle the calendar (for) maybe 10 or 15 games a year that are significant.

He's had some pretty ... good games. He's playing extremely well, we're winning and he's stepping up.

In some games, he's going to have to do it. When he plays against Detroit, possibly he's going to have to play (guard) Rip (Hamilton) in those big games.

It's just good to get this win and get ready for Indiana and the next six or seven games that are coming our way.

The worst thing that can happen is that this thing goes to seven games and maybe we'll have him absolutely healthy. But we're planning on trying to go up to Chicago and closing this thing out.

I also believe Odom would complement Eddie Jones and Brian Grant, our two veteran leaders. As I have said before, we are committed to winning and will do whatever it takes to give our fans talented players and a great team.

I know he had fun and he was a major part of this. But in order to get something good back, you have to give up something good going out. I wish him nothing but the best.

I'm going to continue to ask him to give more and more and more, because he's got to do it. If we want to win, he's got to defend.

He's had that problem in the past. In the second half, I would have loved to give him a rest. But when I wanted to, the game was tied and we went down.

When you're getting your ass kicked, you take it, and you go on to game four. They were very good and they were kicking our ass. And then we began to look at the officials. To me, that's not something you want to do.

Antoine is somebody that I definitely haven't handled well from an offensive standpoint. 'Catch as catch can' isn't good enough. You have to go to him more.

I think people got a view of absolute greatness, back and forth. The bigger the moment, both of them stepped up even bigger and bigger.

I didn't even want to get into that subject. We have been over it, under it, on top of it. I don't know, you can just see it coming off his hand better and he feels confident.

But the players are so instinctive, they always put a hand on these guys.

They just kept hanging in there and then we finally opened it up in the second half.

We just kept hanging in, hanging in, hanging in.

He's grabbing the ball strongly. He's catching the ball in traffic now. It's positioning. It's conditioning. It's getting your head under the rim.

I'm tired of hearing it. Tired of hearing about how, well, we keep shooting ourselves in the foot or we're not doing this or we're not doing that. Somewhere, you've got to take responsibility for who you think you are.

To be honest, at the end of a game like that, I would have liked it to end quietly, but the fans like it.

He'd go a week and he'd be OK, and then he'd get hurt again. So I just hope he's healthy now and I can use him in that role.

The points that he scored really weren't ones that hurt us.

It's very unusual to have guys hurt like this when I don't practice anybody anymore.

They got great individual play from him. And now they're finding the spirit and camaraderie to play together.

His injury is not very good.