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NBA EASTERN CONFERENCE FINALS: PISTONS v HEATMay 24, 2006Antoine WalkerDETROIT, MICHIGAN: Practice Day Q. There's a motto kind of developing for this team. What is it? ANTOINE WALKER: For our team? I don't know. You caught me off guard with that one. Q. Pat Riley has been saying "no excuses." ANTOINE WALKER: Well, we try and live by that. That's one thing, we just watch films a lot. We try and live by that and not make any excuses and we try and put that pressure on ourselves offensively and defensively. If we make a mistake defensively, we feel we should be able to tell each other so we don't make that mistake again. We trust each other now. That's how we've developed as a team. Q. (Inaudible). ANTOINE WALKER: Well, all credit goes to Coach Riley. He's a guy that we watch a lot of film, you see yourself making mistakes on film, you try not to duplicate those mistakes, and everybody lives by that, Shaq, D-Wade, myself, everybody lives by that. We just try not to make the same mistake twice. Q. What's the motto? ANTOINE WALKER: I love "no excuses." Q. You were supposedly brought in as a guy who would be brought in off the bench as the ideal six man, okay, as a power forward ideally. By the end of the season, playoff time, the most crucial time, you're playing 40-plus minutes and you're a small forward. Did you think in any scenario that that would be where you would fit in finally? ANTOINE WALKER: I don't know. I mean, you come in, playing with Udonis and Shaq pretty much blocked me from the starting lineup, and if he wanted to get any playing time, I'm going to have to get into three-man shape. I've worked all season long as far as trying to develop myself into a three. Coach Riley has basically played me -- made sure I played 10, 15 minutes during the season. Posey ended up getting hurt unfortunately, and it gave me the opportunity to play three, but now I think I've got used to it and now it's kind of second nature to me. Q. And the 38 to 40 minutes, you like that, right? ANTOINE WALKER: It gives you the opportunity to get out there and get in the feel of the game. I think I get the luxury of getting a lot of playing time because I play a forward, too. Then it's a different look for me offensively. I think I get opportunities on the floor, I get an opportunity to extend the big guys a lot more. With the 3, I get to post a lot more the 3, so it's two different positions, but I'm more offensive-minded when I'm at the fourth spot. When at the three, you've just got to pick a spot and when I'm at the 4 I'm more offensive-minded because we run a lot of pick-and-rolls. Q. You've got to assume the way that Dwyane Wade played yesterday that Detroit isn't going to let that kind of thing happen again, probably going to pay more attention to him, probably going to do a little bit more of what they did the last time you guys were here in March. What do you guys have to do to be ready for that and then to exploit them if they do trap him, deny him? ANTOINE WALKER: I think they're going to get up there and probably deny him, pick him up full court, probably run three or four different guys on him. When they ran Lindsey Hunter on him -- they'll pick him up with a smaller guy. I think in that situation they'll let the point guard bring it up and get D-Wade in the post against Lindsey Hunter. I think there's little things that we can kind of prevent those situations that put us in foul trouble. But myself and Udonis have got to be more aggressive. When they're trapping in the middle, we just can't rely on him to make plays for us, and I think we'll be fine.
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