A lot of times continuity is your best hope for taking that next step. Can you have a balance of continuity and some additions and bolster it and walk that fine line of adding and embracing continuity?
Mike Budenholzer
Every team has to work through things.
Those teams that really trust each other, really communicate with each other, really hold each other accountable and do it in a good way, in a respectful way, and just genuinely enjoy and like each other, I think that can be something that helps you separate when talent is equal.
To add a player in the draft is something we always look forward to.
If you are just focused on the end result, you are probably going to have a frustrating year. But if you embrace on what you go through every day and how you work every day, there's a lot that can be taken from that.
It always starts with having great competitors on your team, in your front office, on your coaching staff.
Any time your season ends it eats at you.
For coaches, we always look for those examples of guys who put in a lot of time and effort during the summer and really work and it carries over for them to take their game to the next level.
Playing unselfish basketball is a core component of our basketball culture and high assist totals are a great indicator that we are playing the right way.
I would love to be the best defensive team in the league.
Point guards love it when a guy can pick and pop and make a shot and make threes.
Any player that values winning, success would be great in a system that emphasizes unselfishness and ball movement and player movement.
You have to go out on the court and execute on both ends of the court.
As a head coach you have to think about the entire group with every decision you make. Up and down the line, front and back, it has to be about the entire group and the bigger picture.
The best decisions are made when everyone is included, everyone is involved.
Growing up in a small community where everybody knows everybody, it was a lot of fun. Great friends, great memories.
It's part of, I guess, one of the harder parts about coaching is you have to make some tough decisions.
You have to have guys that will compete every night, every possession.
I yell at myself all the time.
Each of us can play a role in eradicating hunger in our communities, and together with Feeding Wisconsin we look forward to raising awareness and having a positive impact on the work to help this important cause.
One of the great things about working for Pop, not just me but everybody, is he wants you to give your opinions. He almost wants you to disagree with him. It's part of the whole process.
My dream was to be an assistant college coach, maybe a head coach, maybe at a Division III school.
What LeBron James has done in our league is phenomenal.
If you have the right kind of guys who are pushing each other and at the same time supporting each other, it's pretty cool.
I literally remember going in my backyard and my dad teaching me Paul Westphal moves.
Things happen. Things change. It's part of life.
My dad was a huge influence on me. He taught me how to play and a lot about the game. He was very passionate and intense. As I started coaching, he wanted to tell me about all of the presses and man-to-man coverages and big philosophical things.
The great Chicago teams when Tex Winter and Phil Jackson were there - the triangle was just amazing. I know Michael Jordan was great, but everybody touched the ball, everybody cut, everybody moved. It was just so hard to guard.
I think individually, Al Horford is very special, very unique. He's a guy that can kind of be the backbone of the defense.
The only social rule you recognized in high school was that Mormon girls don't date non-Mormons.
The dream or the goal was to play in college. That was exclusively my focus.
Sometimes the things that are most successful are very, very simple.
I would have never ever dreamed of my career playing out the way it did.
I remember as a really young child, watching his energy on the sideline and watching him get excited, his body movement, the way he reacted. It's fun to hear other people tell stories about my dad and the things he did in games and the way he'd get upset with officials.
I love what my dad taught me and modeled for me - not just with coaching but as a husband, as a father, as a teacher, as someone in our community that cared and worked to make things better. I watched my dad and learned a lot about a lot of things, not just basketball.
My father, he's meant so much to me. He's always on me to be thankful and humble to everyone who's helped me and helped the team be successful. There were many things that he said and preached throughout my life that are now part of my mindset. It's a big part of who I am.
It's not easy to go out and win and compete and play against the best teams, the best players in the league, and we take that very seriously.
I think that coming to work every day and what we try and do and accomplish, there's a seriousness to it.
Giannis is such a great player.
I can tell you, those video guys are truly trained to see the spacing, the timing, how offenses progress, what are teams doing defensively.
There's an attention to detail that you learn in the video room that, I don't want to say you can't get anywhere else, but it's a huge part of their foundation.
We talk a lot about having high-character guys and high-IQ guys, and I think that's one of the characteristics of those types of people or players that if and when something doesn't go their way, their reaction usually is to come back and fight harder, dig deeper, do more.
The health and well-being of our players are a critical component of our ability to succeed.
When you make that transition to being a head coach, there's so much more you have to think of and consider. You're constantly thinking, 'How does this impact our culture? How does this impact us two, three steps down the road?' It's thinking big picture, and all of those things come with time. It's a great challenge.
On a lot of teams that bottom guy, that weakside defender, is critical if something happens and you're broken down off the dribble or you're beat. That person has got to be there.
I'm very appreciative of Atlanta. I love living here. I love coaching here.
I'm passionate about coaching.
I love coaching.
There are so many pick and rolls in an NBA game. It's so hard to guard.
My mom, raising seven children, was such a steady and firm influence. You did not mess around with my mom. Nobody in the neighborhood or whole town did. She had that steadiness and firmness but love at the same time.
