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 wanted to be aggressive early because the team gets better when I do that. The Mavericks and Phoenix are two teams that really try to jump on you early, so I wanted to be aggressive to keep them from getting on top of us.
It's always good when the top teams play. You always look forward to that. Obviously, we have some history with that team being in that tough, grind-it-out series last year. It's going to be fun.
It's just always fun to play against this team and the other top teams in the league. That's really the only motivation you've got.
It's amazing the strides he's made in such a short career. He's climbed to the top of the mountain very quickly. With the hype he got coming in, it was hard to imagine that he could've lived up to it. He's surpassed it.
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.
It was up-tempo and up and down. It was kind of fun, actually, but it was a shootout. I've really got a lot of respect for that team. They play so hard, and they won't slip up. You have to beat them.
It was a little different, but I'm happy to see those guys getting some important minutes, playing down the stretch when it really counted. Those minutes are when you really grow. Any move you make could be the best or worst move.