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
I'm so excited that our team is finally getting the credit we deserve. We've been dominating the league for a few years and not gotten the proper notoriety and attention. We've kind of come full circle with that.
The nucleus is the same, but our bench is back. We're 12 deep and I don't think anybody else in the league can say that.
We still have the best record in the league, but we're not playing the best basketball in the league right now. We have to get back to doing the things we were doing earlier in the season.
He's better than anybody in this league off the bench. He's better than 80% of the starters in this league. He's something we've got to go to when he comes in the game because he's a mismatch almost every night.
He's playing with a lot more energy right now, as we expected him to. When he's aggressive like that, I never feel like we can lose -- ever. He's probably one of the most difficult guys in the league to guard when he's aggressive.
I'm sure they get up to play us. Anytime you have the best team in the league coming into your building, you know that's the case.
We talked about it in the locker room before the game, that this was the game we needed. We felt they hadn't been tested in this postseason, they hadn't played against a team like us that plays defense, believes in itself and tries to control the tempo of the game. Yesterday was a good game to show them that.
We just want to get another win. We let one slip away down there, and we want to get it back.
We just wanted to go out there and protect our home court. We knew they played a tough game last night, so we wanted to jump on them early and take care of business.
We just stepped up to the challenge. I didn't ever think they were going to miss, and we couldn't hit anything, but we knew it was a matter of time. We're never out of a game, no matter what the score. You can't measure our pride. We just had to chase them off the 3-point line and start hitting some shots.
We just had a tough shooting night. We got all the shots that we wanted, but they just didn't go down.
We felt we had a chance to win this series, but nobody else felt that. We knew we were the only ones who believed in us.
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.
It would be nice if he was in here with us.