Richard Jefferson
Richard Jefferson
Richard Allen Jeffersonis an American professional basketball player for the Cleveland Cavaliers of the National Basketball Association. He was a member of the United States men's national basketball team at the 2003 Tournament of the Americas and the Athens 2004 Summer Olympics, and won the NBA championship as a member of the Cleveland Cavaliers in 2016...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionBasketball Player
Date of Birth21 June 1980
CityLos Angeles, CA
CountryUnited States of America
I really didn't even realize it was that crazy.
I had been on ice for 3½ quarters. I was watching Vince go to work, he's unbelievable. Then coach put the ball in my hands and I tried to be aggressive.
Certain teams set your goals at a certain level. For this team, if someone would have told you at the beginning of the year that we were going to make the playoffs, it probably wouldn't have been much of a story.
If you look at a lot of my shots, most of them were assisted by my teammates. It was just a matter of me getting open and them feeding me the ball.
In the first half, especially the second quarter, we were not playing D the way we needed to.
In the fourth quarter, we predominantly play through him. He's our leading scorer and he always takes the majority of the shots. A lot of people that don't watch us a lot throughout the year don't understand that's how we play.
Hey, we've been playing the same way the whole year and we've been successful. I believe in my teammates. I believe in my coaching staff. We've been playing one way, all year long.
He's extremely healthy. He's the best player in the history of this franchise. Everything that we've accomplished starts with him. We need him to be the dominant point guard that he always has been over his career in order for us to succeed.
He's extremely confident with our team. He knows our schemes, he knows our coaching staff, he knows what we're trying to accomplish and that's why he's been effective.
He's the epitome of a professional. He brings a lot of confidence out on the floor, even if he hasn't played for awhile. It's reassuring knowing you have someone like that on the team.
He took control. He did what he wanted, on the pick-and-roll, he got to wherever he wanted, he found open guys, he got to the basket. He got to the free throw line. I think that's what really got his game going.
We put ourselves in that position. We didn't do a good job early.
We would drive and kick it to guys with wide-open looks but couldn't get anything to fall. For the most part we played good defense, but you have to be near perfect on the defensive end to have a chance the way we were shooting.
We understand that this next game is going to be the hardest one of the series.