Chauncey Billups
Chauncey Billups
Chauncey Ray Billupsis an American retired professional basketball player who played 17 seasons in the National Basketball Association. A star at the University of Colorado, he was selected third overall in the 1997 NBA draft by the Boston Celtics. A five-time NBA All-Star and a three-time All-NBA selection, Billups played for the Celtics, Toronto Raptors, Denver Nuggets, Minnesota Timberwolves, Detroit Pistons, New York Knicks, and Los Angeles Clippers during his NBA career. He won the NBA Finals MVP in 2004...
ProfessionBasketball Player
Date of Birth25 September 1976
CityDenver, CO
We knew that they would come in fighting. We had control of it, but we kind of let up a little bit in the fourth quarter and they brought it back, but we pretty much controlled the game.
We changed up our scheme a little bit defensively and made them take tougher shots. Once we made our adjustments and changed our scheme a little bit at halftime, we started hitting some shots as well, and our defense picked our offense up, too.
No doubt about it. That team is one of the best teams in the West. They've been struggling a little bit but that's when it's toughest to play teams, when they're struggling. They're looking to get back right and what better team to beat than us? We didn't look past that team, came out and took care of business.
Our only motivation is not winning it last year. That's our whole motivation. We thought we was the best team in the world last year and came up a little bit short. We feel the same way again and we want to validate that.
I think we'll be a little bit more up-tempo,
For whatever reason, we feel like we can just kind of coast to the finish line and not do what we've done all season, to be looked at as the best team. We're getting away a little bit from what we do. Guys are, unfortunately, looking too far ahead to the playoffs.
Our defense is going to stay the same. Teams might score a few more points because we might play a little bit at a faster pace, but our defense will remain one or two in the league.
When you have to take the ball out, you can't run. This last couple of weeks our defense hasn't been the same. When you have to take that ball out, you can't get transition baskets.
We love playing on the road. We love the idea of 14, 15, 18,000 people all being against you and being able to quiet the crowd. We love that. We feed off that.
We're never out of the game. You can just never measure pride. We're never out of the game, no matter what the score looks like. Tonight was a great example of that.
We knew it was going to take time to mesh. We're starting to get our swagger back.
We're not into it. Because we know once we do get into it, it's a long grind. We've played until June the last two years, and that's long. That's three months. When it's time, we'll be ready.
We got longer, younger and more athletic. This year we played a little more up-tempo than we did last year.
This was a very big win, but we won't know how big for a while.