Antawn Jamison

Antawn Jamison
Antawn Cortez Jamisonis an American retired professional basketball player who played 16 seasons in the National Basketball Association. He played college basketball for the North Carolina Tar Heels, when he was named national player of the year in 1998. He was selected by the Toronto Raptors in the first round with the fourth overall pick of the 1998 NBA draft before being traded to the Golden State Warriors for former Tar Heel teammate Vince Carter. Jamison was named to the...
ProfessionBasketball Player
Date of Birth12 June 1976
CityShreveport, LA
Sometimes you do have a lot of minutes, but it's crunch time. We know when we're out there we give our team a chance to win, but we have to be smart about it. We know we have 19 or 20 games left and have to play smart.
We get paid to play ball, but it's good to do a charity game to put a smile on a kid's face and do it all for a good cause.
We were so disappointed in ourselves. To come out in the first game like that. National TV. The spotlight. And we pretty much laid an egg. We embarrassed the coaching staff, we embarrassed ourselves. We showed that in practice (Sunday). It wasn't one of those practices where we just showed up, took a few shots and went home. Coach was on us and we went at it. That's what you saw in this game.
From Day 1 to now, it's a testament to how much he loves the game and wants to be the best.
If we had lost this kind of game about a month or two ago, this room would have been awful. This is not the same team where a loss like this would have lasted four or five games. But we're feeling a lot better about ourselves than we have in a long time.
It's one of those things where you always want to get better, you always want to improve, ... Every season, you want to be working on something in your game and that's something, along with my defense, that I want to improve on this season. That's the approach we need to take as a team.
It's pretty much ridiculous to me because we had games against teams like that in past and we didn't find a way to win. If you ask me, it's the opposite way around. We play well against the best teams in the league and played poorly against the average teams. We just need to get our act together.
It's six games, and pretty much everybody we're playing is a quality team. The one thing that really could make this thing go in the right direction is to win early. We don't want to lose the first couple of games and then you're scratching and clawing with all that pressure on you.
It is very disappointing. Tonight was a great opportunity to win. Unfortunately it didn't happen that way. We got a big game against Milwaukee on Wednesday. They're chasing us for that fifth spot, so it will be like a playoff game. Everybody needs to step up their game, and hopefully we can do something there.
We've been hovering pretty much around .500 all season. There's no excuse for us that when these five games are over we shouldn't be two or three games above .500. Having said that, I think we all know the importance of this five-game stretch before we hit the road before the break is over with. It's a great opportunity for us.
When we first left, I think the most important thing was to come back and play well, like, 'You should have kept me around,' or 'You should have re-signed me. After that, it's just a point where you want to win, and we were fortunate enough to get the win, but also play pretty good games individually.
We didn't play well that game and I didn't play well that game so I really want to find a way to avenge that loss. We need to have a good game in front of our home crowd and get another win.
You don't want to come across a scenario going into the end of March or beginning of April when you have to win eight out of 10. This is a great opportunity for us to create some distance and climb up in the standings now. You don't want to continue to be around .500, one or two games above, one or two games below, and then in the last month or so you really have to turn it on.
The one thing that could make this thing go in the right direction is to get a couple games early. We don't want to do like we did the first road trip when we lost the first couple, and were scratching and clawing and putting pressure on ourselves.