HoopsHype.com Interviews

Tayshaun Prince: "Things like that happen"
by Bruce Meyer / November 25, 2004

Tayshaun Prince: I'm doing alright. Obviously everything's not good because we're losing. Everything's not going right in that nature. I guess it's just gonna take a little more time. As far as individual, if things are going bad, if we're losing and I'm playing well, then obviously I'm upset. But we've had some good games this year, but a lot of bad ones even some that we won. We definitely haven't been playing the basketball we're capable of.

Not like you were at the end of last year when it seemed like everything came together.

TP: We had a hundred and some games under our belt before we got to the playoffs and obviously we had a great rhythm at that time and things were working very well. You know we're 11 games into the season and obviously we didn't want to start out like this. Since we have, we have a big wall to climb to get things back where they used to be. We've got to start it now because we've got a lot of games in the next few days we had four games in five days this week, and the same next week.

You had a close-up look at LeBron.

TP: He definitely couldn't miss anything tonight (Wednesday night). Everything went in the basket. But like I said before, that's what we've got to expect not from just him but the guys we play against in this league, because winning it last year, everybody's gonna come out and play us tough. They obviously want to test themselves against the championship team to see where they're at. You saw how Charlotte played against us last night, and you saw how I shouldn't say Cleveland, I should say LeBron played tonight. But definitely, he hit some hard shots. But it started early. He's definitely the hardest guy in the league to guard, when he either gets a rebound or they've got a fast break, because of his speed, his quickness and his athleticism. So he's definitely tough to stop in that situation.

Tell me a little bit about the fight. What was going through your mind when the melee started?

TP: That's in the past. I know a lot of people have been talking about it. I've never really seen anything like that happen before. For the Pistons organization to be a part of that, obviously that's bad enough. But situations do happen. It's how you recover from it.

You were one who didn't leave the bench. That had to take some self-restraint given what was going on.

TP: There's really no sense for me to leave the bench if altercations are going on in the stands that don't involve any of our players. There were enough guys who left our bench to where we only had eight guys play the game after that happened. Things like that happen. You just have to handle the situation.

Is there anyone to blame?

TP: Who knows? Like I said, you can blame either or, but situations like that are going to happen no matter what.

What do you think about the punishments. Are they in-line, too much?

TP: I can't answer that. And the reason I say that is because I'm not the one handing out the suspensions, and obviously the people who are handing them out have never seen a situation like this before, so how can they determine what's harsh and what's not?

It certainly does change the complexion of the division if everything stands as it is.

TP: They're still a good basketball team no matter what. They're playing without three crucial guys, and they won a game last night against the Celtics. So they're still gonna play hard, they're still gonna play aggressive. You can't ever count them out.

Bruce Meyer is a regular contributor to HoopsHype.com

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