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NBA EASTERN CONFERENCE FINALS: MAGIC v CAVALIERS

May 21, 2009

Stan Van Gundy

CLEVELAND, OHIO: Practice Day

Q. Coach, the day after. You practiced well. You guys obviously came out in uniform.
COACH VAN GUNDY: We practiced well. We didn't really do much. We walked through one thing out on the court defensively and we watched film. Pretty much like we did in the other rounds. You know, we had two guys over 40 minutes last night. Dwight had 38.
For us, we have been doing most of our work on game day mornings and using -- the other days in between have basically been mental stuff.

Q. Did you sleep well last night, Coach?
COACH VAN GUNDY: No.

Q. What kept you up?
COACH VAN GUNDY: You know, same things that keep me up all the time. Just thinking about everything, that we need to be better, differently, change, worrying about everything. Same thing that keeps me up all the time.

Q. You know how good your team is. Do you think the nation is catching on a little bit?
COACH VAN GUNDY: I don't even think most of the nation knows that we're in this series. So I think this is, you know, the Cleveland Cavaliers' and LeBron James' series and who they are playing against is incidental.

Q. Does that bother your guys?
COACH VAN GUNDY: It doesn't bother us. I don't think it bothers our guys. That's the way it is. I mean, look, they won 66 games. They swept through two rounds of the playoffs. They've got the most valuable player in the league. I mean, hey, that's the attention that goes with it.
So we are really incidental to this playoff series to most of the national media and fans and everything else. And that's just the way it is.
But it doesn't matter. The bottom line is, like we say all the time, this is not the BCS where people get to vote for who the best teams are. We actually get to play on the court to decide that.

Q. Were you a little surprised that the Cavs tried to guard Dwight straight up?
COACH VAN GUNDY: Was I surprised? No. They didn't guard him straight up. They came down. A lot of times -- I mean, they had a lot of blocked shots from guys on top, from LeBron. Szczerbiak came down a couple times and got a piece of it. So I would not say that they guarded him straight up.
Now, they didn't come and double team him on the catch, but to say they guarded him straight up I think would also be a mistake.

Q. When your players are down by 14, 15 in the first half, the players talked about what you said to them. You are not going to get it all back at once.
COACH VAN GUNDY: Yeah, I think that's a little overblown. I don't think that what I said probably had any impact whatsoever. I just think our guys are pretty resilient.
But what we were talking about, and not just me but the other players, that there is a tendency when you get behind of trying to -- you know, sometimes in a regular season you actually just let it go. But in the playoffs, you want it so badly, there is a tendency to try to get it all back at once and that's not going to happen.
So from 15, we just talked about let's get it under ten. And then from ten, we talked about let's get it under six. And, you know, from there, then when we got back in the game, we had a chance to fight it out.
We've talked about for two rounds, we had two very difficult series going into this. This series obviously is going to be even more difficult. As much as we can, we got to try to play possession by possession and not worry about the scoreboard. You know, if we play well enough for long enough, the scoreboard will take care of itself.

Q. I know you don't want to give yourself any credit, but I'm going to force you to talk about it a little bit because the guys are trying to give you a little bit of credit. Can you talk about your style last night and the influence.
COACH VAN GUNDY: I don't think my style is any different from night to night, you know? I mean, I'm pretty -- I'm pretty emotional and, you know, the way -- it's just the way the sports world works. When our guys have a great comeback and we win, then, you know, that style is great and everybody loves you. And when not, then you're out of control. You're a maniac. You panic and everything else.
So, look, I don't know which it is. I don't care. I'm just trying to do everything I can to help our team win games. And that's all I care about is the end result, and I said I'll live with being judged on the end result, good or bad. And I wish people would sort of keep it to that, too. But they don't, so that's the way it goes.

End of FastScripts

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