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 didn't want to be too much in transition because we were already tired coming into the game. We had the tempo where we needed it to be.
We were trying to go to him, inside or outside. He was very aggressive and his shots were falling, so we were going to keep going to him until he tired himself out.
For me, it was like, whatever happens, just let it happen. I was tired of it. We was holding out hope that he would be back, but what can you do? I wish all that wasn't circulating when we was trying to win a championship, you know what I'm saying, if it had just happened at the end of the season, but it didn't really affect us.
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.
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.
We go back to the hotel instead of to the airplane.
To have those nerves to make those plays at the end of a game isn't something you really can be taught. It's instinct I think.
We always knew a championship ring means way more than being an all-star, although we wanted to be all-stars. This is just secondary. It's not going to make me feel the same way as I felt when I was on that big stage in the finals when I won a championship. At the same time, it's going to be up there, because it's going to validate what I always felt about myself.