Orlando Magic Coach Van Gundy calls his team: "Mentally Soft" and "Not Tough Enough"

http://www.nba.com/magic/news/quotes_122107.html

The Orlando Magic were embarrassed on their home floor by the Jazz, with the fans loudly booing the team

They've lost 6 of their last 8 games.

Orlando Magic Head Coach Stan Van Gundy:
On the overall game…
“That team plays way too hard for us and they’re way too tough for us, bottom line. We don’t play hard enough. We’re not tough enough and this will not stop. And until we change the way we play and play harder, it will not stop. We were ahead by one at the half simply because we shot the ball well. And when the 3’s stop falling we had no chance because we can’t compete with them. We just can’t compete. There’s not one guy out there, not one guy tonight could compete with the guy he was playing against, not one guy. I’m not saying they don’t have the ability to, but they could not tonight. Not Dwight, not anybody. We had a team-wide effort of guys getting their butt kicked. And we have a lot of guys right now that are okay with that as long as they get their numbers. It’s probably going to continue until we get some guys who want to win.”

On possibly changing lineup/rotation…
“Here’s the problem, other than maybe James Augustine, we didn’t put one guy… and Adonal – two guys that we put on the floor played hard enough tonight. I wish somebody would give me a reason to go to them. Right until the end we wouldn’t get on a loose ball and they still would. They played harder than us from the start to the finish and I don’t see it changing. I think it’s all coming from me. All I hear them talk about when they talk to each other is offensive things. I don’t think that they see what they fans see and you see and we see; how much harder other teams are playing than them on our home floor. I don’t think they see that. I think tomorrow when we show it all to them on film, quite honestly the state of mind our group is in, and how soft they’ve been mentally, I think every clip we show them they’ll have an excuse for.”

On players’ offensive mindset…
“I think guys are very concerned with our offense in general. How many touches they get, how they move ball, making sure guys find them when they’re open and the whole thing. They’ll talk about a lot of things to get better, but the thing nobody will say is we’ve got to play harder and we’ve got to be a little tougher. Not a little tougher, a lot tougher. We were absolutely frightened of contact. We won’t put our body in front of anybody driving the ball to the basket. We won’t screen anybody. We won’t block anybody out. It’s a soft team and until they change the results won’t change. And the same thing that happened last year will happen again to the same group of guys. Quick start, and when people start picking up the intensity, they can’t handle it. I don’t expect it to change until our entire mindset and attitudes change and I haven’t seen that. I haven’t seen a rising up. For a few minutes I thought in the second and third quarters in Houston we did. And the second half in Charlotte, but I haven’t seen it in this building in forever. We have to play great, great, great offensively to have any kind of chance. We don’t deserve to be on the court with the team that was here tonight.”

Orlando Magic Center Adonal Foyle:
“When we go out there and guys don’t play with the same type of effort, don’t play with the same defensive intensity, we have to let them know that. We have to hold them up to each and every one of us out there. This team does not have a problem on the offensive end. We can get whatever we want, whatever shot we want. But we have to approach the game with the same type of mentality defensively. We have to take it as a personal challenge when someone comes at us. Until we do that, we’re not going to be as good as we can be. There’s just no way around it. We can moan and groan, or we can go out and take it out. The good thing about this league, there’s always a game tomorrow. We have seen elements of it in the past and we need to be successful.”

“I think whenever we’re on the road; we pull together a lot more. I think we know that there’s not going to be anybody pulling for us. So you have to come together and work hard. I think we understand how difficult it is to win on the road. Most of our games so far have been on the road. So we come into the season knowing that we have to win to win on the road. I think guys let their guard down a little bit when we’re home. When you’re on the road, you know that you can get your butt kicked any night. I think you come out with that kind of focus, that laser-focus, you know it’s us against the world. At home, you lower your guard, things are nice. We have to figure out what that intensity is on the road and bring it home. We need to get our fans involved in the game and they’re not going to be involved until we show that we’re going to compete, and we’re going to work harder, we’re going to out-work the other team. And we should not get outworked at home. We should not get outworked at home by anybody. We should lose games but we should not be outworked. And we got outworked tonight.”

Orlando Magic Guard Jameer Nelson:
“I’m just as frustrated as he (Van Gundy) is. As a team, as a person, we have to change. We have to compete harder, no matter where we’re at. We need to be more aggressive offensively and defensively.”

“In the first half, our energy was OK. In the second half, they came out more aggressive.”

“We have a lot of offensive-minded players. That doesn’t mean that we can‘t play defense. We grew up playing defense, why can’t we play defense now?”

“We’re a lot more focused on the road for whatever reason.”

Orlando Magic Forward Rashard Lewis:
“Other teams have been outworking us, we’re not even playing hard enough, they want it more than us. We got to get that aggressiveness back. I think we got off to a great start and we thought it was going to be easy. But teams are coming in ready to play us.”



Utah Jazz Head Coach Jerry Sloan:
On the win:
“It was kind of tough because Paul (Millsap) had to play a few more minutes, but he had a terrific game. Our bench had 50 points and I don’t know if we’ve done that in a long, long time. Matt (Harpring) came in and gave us a tremendous lift right at the end of the first quarter and he executed our offense. We executed our offense better than we’ve done in, I don’t know how long. We had good shots; good chances to offensively rebound the ball and kept them (the Magic) from getting every shot they wanted.”

On the Paul Millsap-Rashard Lewis match up:
“We only ran a couple plays to him, as far as running plays. That’s one thing about Paul, we’ve never really run a lot of plays to him to begin with. He just goes after the basketball. Some guys have to have plays run to him but he just plays. I thought he did a terrific job. Our whole team did. We moved the ball pretty well, but the most important thing was we were able to get a win. Wherever it was, whoever you’re playing against, whatever the case. I think they were starting to doubt just a little bit if they could win a game. We just played hard.”

On breaking their road losing streak:
“We’ve struggled a great deal here in December. It’s our first road win in December. That’s a long time.”

On the Magic struggling at home:
“We can’t worry about the other team; we have to worry about ourselves. We’ve been struggling very, very bad and we’ve got to concentrate on what we have going on. You can’t worry, you have to get prepared and mentally prepared to play hard. I thought we had a little bit more of that tonight from all the guys we had out there.”

On Paul Millsap’s hustling style of play tonight:
“He made some terrific moves around the basket and a lot of that was on his own for the most part. He had a few post-ups and was able to get inside. It’s just one of those things. You have to go back a year ago, he was terrific. He, Matt Harpring and (Gordon) Garicek, those three guys, they did a terrific job off our bench all last year. And that was important to us to be able to win. When our big guys were struggling, Paul usually went in the ball game and he made some terrific plays for us last year as a rookie. He’s the one guy who deserves more playing time. He played a hell of a game.”

Utah Jazz Forward Paul Millsap: “I was trying to be more aggressive and assertive on the court. Guys were just finding me through the seams. Sometimes you just have to exploit that and continue to do that.”

(on scoring career-high in victory) “It is a great feeling. It is a great thing for our team to come out with this win and break this streak on the road. It is a confidence booster for us and we have one more before this road trip is over.”

“We pride ourselves on how we play defense and the way we stop guys. Our play tonight was great and the guys came off the bench and did a great job. We were able to get the win.”

“We feel good about every game that we go into. You have to. Confidence is a big thing in this league. If you get down on yourself early it will kill you.”

Utah Jazz Forward Carlos Boozer: “Paul was incredible. It is great to have him playing like that. It was incredible to get Matt back and C.J. Miles played great. Jason Hart had a great game. Our bench has been terrific and they helped us win this game especially in the third quarter.”

“It is great to get one period. So for us we need to ride this momentum into tomorrow night and build on our defensive stops.”

“I am going to be fresh regardless. I love playing basketball and it was great to see Paul do his thing. Now we expect Paul to do that every night. It was great to get some rest where usually we are out there for 40 minutes or so. The biggest thing is that we got a huge victory and we are excited about that. We are going to celebrate that for a little while and get ready for the Heat tomorrow night.”

“We haven’t practiced that much because we have had so many back-to-backs and four in five nights or four in six nights what have you. So it was good to get out there sweat a little bit, work on some things, and get some shooting in. Hopefully we can get some practice in before too long.”

“We got some stops. The key was our defense. We trusted one another and rotated very well. We showed on pick-and-rolls. We contested jump shots. We got the rebounds and got steals and what have you. The key was our defense. I am going to keep harping on that and everybody in here will.”

http://canadianpress.google.com/article/ALeqM5g8n8WAdAT9sg3y6ys7x9tnADF2zw

Stan Van Gundy looked furious, and sounded worse.

His Orlando Magic have lost six of eight, and Friday night allowed their second career high in a week. Paul Millsap had a career-best 28 points and the Utah Jazz broke a seven-game road losing streak with a 113-94 victory.

"We're absolutely frightened of contact - frightened," Van Gundy said. "We won't put our body in front of anybody driving the ball to the basket. We don't screen anybody, we won't block anybody out. It's a soft team, and until they change the results won't change."

The Magic, who looked like one of the NBA's best teams after going 13-4 in November, haven't won a home game since Nov. 24, and are now 5-6 at Amway Arena. They left the court to a chorus of boos from the few fans who stayed to the end.

"I feel bad for our fans," Van Gundy said. "I would have booed a lot louder than that. ... And I hope they will, if they put out the same effort the next time we're here."

The Jazz hadn't won a road game since Nov. 28, but made this one look easy.

Utah's reserves, including Millsap, outscored Orlando's 50-20, and Carlos Boozer had 24 points, nine rebounds and eight assists. Deron Williams had 17 points and seven assists, Andrei Kirilenko scored 18 and Matt Harpring and C.J. Miles each added 10.

"We executed our offence better than we've done in I don't know how long," Jazz coach Jerry Sloan said. "We had good shots, good chances to offensively rebound the ball and kept them from getting every shot they wanted."

Hedo Turkoglu scored a season-high 27 for Orlando and Dwight Howard had 20 points and 13 rebounds. Rashard Lewis scored seven in the first quarter, but ended up with just 12. He shot 2-for-7 from three-point range.

The Magic shot well early, taking an eight-point lead. But the Jazz closed the first quarter with a 13-4 run to take a 28-27 lead.

The game stayed close until the third quarter, when Millsap took over. He scored all Utah's points in an 11-2 run over 4:03. It put the Jazz up 77-67, and Orlando got no closer in the fourth quarter.

"I was trying to be more aggressive and assertive on the court," Millsap said. "Guys were just finding me through he seams."

Harpring was back in the lineup after missing three straight with stomach trouble, but the Jazz were still missing Mehmet Okur, out since Dec. 11 with a strained left trapezius.

Jazz guard Gordan Giricek was not with the team, two nights after Sloan banished him to the locker room following a tense exchange on the bench. Giricek flew back to Utah on Thursday and the Jazz have said nothing further about his status.

Orlando is now 4-6 in December, while Utah is 3-8. The Jazz had lost eight of their last nine.

Notes: Orlando turned the ball over 20 times for 30 Utah points, while the Jazz had 13 turnovers for 12 points. ... Magic G Carlos Arroyo returned after missing five games (left foot). He didn't play until the fourth quarter, when the Magic were down by double digits.