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
Teams change lineups all the time. We're not a championship team where we're bringing back five (starters). We're still searching.
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.
We had a little talk with the team at halftime and they seemed to respond.
I wasn't trying to rally the team by getting ejected. I think it was more just a difference of opinion. We were dealing with things the whole game, and we thought that we had a legitimate beef with the way they were playing Dirk. I guess we were wrong.
We feel fortunate to get out of here with a victory. Both teams played awesome defense. I don't know if we win this game in the past. Now, we're a different team.
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 that we went through, because it seems to have brought our team closer together.
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 thought we were pretty good defensively, for the most part, against one of the tougher teams in the Western Conference. We knew we had to be physical.
We thought we got our defense under us in the first half and kind of set the tone for the rest of the game. We had a little lull defensively in the third quarter, but they're a very good offensive basketball team and they weren't going to come out of the locker room lying down.
We are fortunate to get out of here with a victory. Both teams played some really awesome defense and we just couldn't get our offense in gear in the second half. This is another game that we proved to ourselves that we can win basketball games with our defense. I don't know if we would have won this game in the past. Now we are a different team.
Three games in four days, playing teams below .500, above .500, it really doesn't matter at this point. Everybody's got schedule stuff. The schedule is not a problem. We haven't played well since the All-Star break, all right? We have not played well since the All-Star break.
Yeah, that puts them at an advantage I would say. So what I'll try to do is when he puts his four guys out there, I'll try to have combinations. I'll try to play Steve and Dirk together since they played together. And maybe I'll play Yao and T-Mac. So maybe we at least have four guys out there . . . two and two. And then throw in somebody else. . . . Maybe Kobe (Bryant); he's a whole team himself.
I don't want our team to misconstrue the message of us trying to get to the next level. We're not going to get there in one night, all right? No matter what's been said over the All-Star break or what race we're supposed to be in, it's all meaningless right now.