Avery Johnson

Avery Johnson
Avery Johnsonis an American basketball coach who is currently the head coach of the Alabama Crimson Tide men's basketball team. Johnson spent 16 years in the National Basketball Association as a player, and subsequently served as the head coach of two NBA teams: the Dallas Mavericks and New Jersey/Brooklyn Nets. He led the Mavericks to their first NBA Finals appearance and to three consecutive 50+ win seasons. During his playing days, Johnson was known as the "Little General" for his...
ProfessionBasketball Player
Date of Birth25 March 1969
CityNew Orleans, LA
We just had to make some points about it. We've got to play our best basketball to win Game 1.
We're disappointed with the way we finished the game. Our defense wasn't very good tonight. We gave up 65 points in the second half. We had a lot of things go wrong defensively.
Teams are coming in here dropping 30-some points on us in the first quarter. We've been digging ourselves in a hole, so I'll continue to work on finding the right formula to help get us off to better starts. Maybe I won't call timeouts as quick as I used to. We'll have to do something.
Marshall was outstanding tonight because he really competed at a high level. He had to play point guard for almost three quarters and that is not his natural position. We are really excited about what we did in the regular season.
I sure hope we're different. We seem to have been playing more physical basketball on the defensive end. Again, that was just one of those special games, the guy got on fire and obviously, since that's happened, we're not the team he's scored the most points against.
I'm so happy we went through that little period, because it seems to have brought our team closer together. Nobody pointed fingers. At the same time, we played against some really good basketball teams that were really hot.
We have three centers and none of those guys can do any cameos at small forward or point guard, so that leaves the rest of the guys. We need them to play now.
Points are hard to come by against Memphis, and it's been that way for everybody because of their tempo ... and their defensive scheme. We've got to place a premium on getting good shots.
We had to get this game behind us for a lot of reasons. We hadn't played well this year against Lakers, and Kobe's been averaging 50 points on us. We didn't want that to happen again.
We're not playing any defense. They shot 55 percent from the field and score 56 points in the first half. You're not going to win many games in this league playing like that. We've definitely taken a step back in that area.
You have great offensive players in this league who don't let anything bother them. Even when I played, you had supposedly great point guard defenders and they were supposed to get under your skin with their growl or their stare or how they would grab or hold you. There are things you can do on the court to try to take care of that. I've participated in that kind of stuff before. Just be physical.
It was a gutsy win. We were almost apologizing for being on the court in the first half. Then we got a little more physical. We tried to make some other players score (besides James) instead of letting them get from point A to point B with no resistance.
That first-quarter defense probably was as good as I've seen in a long time. No matter who you do it to, when you hold a team to 10 points in a quarter, that's pretty special.
We tried to bother him and make it hard on him. He's been averaging 50 points on us and we didn't want that to happen (again).