Isaiah Thomas

“My first choice was to work it out with Larry Brown. I needed Larry and I gave him 50 million bucks. This is a situation that I'm in and I'll handle it and I'll make it work.”

“I believe in the players and what I've put together and we'll make it work.”

“It was important to me to believe, because if I don't believe, how can I expect them to believe?”

“I'll continue to try to make changes to better improve the team.”

“We were going to have to experiment, and we needed to develop our younger players. And a lot of the changes were because of injuries. But that's where I give a lot of credit to the group in terms of being able to maintain things.”

“I would still like to get more athletic and have players that can really cover what's going on in the game.”

“If all I'm remembered for is being a good basketball player, then I've done a bad job with the rest of my life.”

“All of those things had been talked about, suggested, rumored, as a manager and as a member of the Knicks organization, I couldn't allow myself to think that way or believe that.”

“It wasn't about the X's and the O's and the strategy; it was more about keeping 12 guys focused and committed to a task. That group dynamic, and then helping them to grow as people and basketball players.”

“Larry Brown thought Steve Francis was a Larry Brown type of player.”

“I can't think of any NBA team over the last few years that lost three starters. And we replaced them basically with three guys who really haven't played in this league.”

“The biggest difference is in the leadership. It was better for us. We had more coaches and mentors to help us. A lot of the younger players today suffer from a lack of direction.”

“The type of athletes we draft still need types of versatility on the defense side of the ball, run the offense. You should still be concerned on the offense side of the ball.”

“Instead of me telling them what they need to work on, I wanted to hear from them what they needed to work on.”

“Everybody wants to be perfect.”

“How can I tell the eighth or ninth man on the team that I want you to work hard every day and I want you to improve and get better, but while you're doing that you're not going to get any minutes?”

“My greatest gift that I have in life is basketball.”

“You have to develop your whole game to completion.”

“My thought has always been completion. Maybe you have to rebound better, shoot better, hit free throws, handle the ball, defend better. You have to do all those things in the course of a game.”

“I love what I'm doing.”