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 were running around having fun. We were pretty much playing pre-season minutes, which is working out well.
Man, it was ugly. We were getting good looks, too. But at some point, I always feel we're going to get it going and make a run or two that leads to a win.
We're going to run some decoys for him. We're not going to run plays for him.
I get a lot more confidence winning games playing defense than winning the run-and-gun game.
I just didn't want to let him run free, ... He's a tough cover. Every time he puts that ball, he's got a chance to make that shot. He missed some shots. It was good D, but he missed some shots.
We came out aggressive, trapping and running around, having fun, and guys were making shots. It was fun.
It takes a while -- a long time, because we have so many different sets, options. It's not just the regular old sets that every NBA team runs. We run a lot of stuff. It's kind of complicated.
That run we went on was so fun and so unbelievable, we let our guard down and thought it would be easy.
They live and die with their three-point shot; they got a lot of great three-point shooters. We're just trying to run them off that line -- either go to the rack or shoot mid-range shots. Because we know if they get it cooking from that three-point line, you could give yourself a long night.
It was a good one. I was just feeling good. I was being aggressive, knowing I had a tough match-up with Steve Francis. It was just a good game. They guys were telling me to run the plays that we were running, and I just stayed aggressive.
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 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.