Q&A with Donnie Walsh <div class="quote_poster">Quote:</div><div class="quote_post">Question: There have been other years when people wanted you to make major changes, but you didn't. Is this year any different? Do you feel any urges to "blow up" your roster? Answer: I don't think you ever look at it like you have to blow up the whole team. Anybody who's looking at that just doesn't understand the nature of a team. And they didn't look at our team this year -- the fact a lot of our problems were related to so many of our guys missing games. One thing I don't do is hold it against a player that he got hurt, which seems to be a fad now. A team changes all the time. We have to see where we can make changes that make this a much better team than it is. This team has talent, but after two years of not attaining what they should have -- for understandable reasons maybe -- it's time for us to look at it to see what we have to do to make this team what it could be. Q: Can you accomplish what you want with just a couple of changes, or do you need to do more? A: If you make two or three changes on a team, that's a lot of change. You need to go and look and see how many teams do that. Not many. Most of the time, they're doing that to go all the way down and get draft choices (in the lottery). Q: Some people will say you should go down and get into the lottery . . . A: I would never do that. Never do that. You're asking people to wait for five or six years, and I will not do that. And I don't think we have to do that. I think that's nonsense, I really do. I certainly didn't like the way we played at times this year, but I'm not ready to say this whole team has to be broken up. When you've got key injuries to players, you're putting a lot of pressure on players who weren't expected to be in that position. Then once you start to lose, you're going to have issues. They could be confidence issues more than anything else. They don't think they can win. So injuries do become a factor. Q: The most consistent thing that happened after previous disappointing seasons is that you made coaching changes. A: I don't think either one of us (including Pacers president Larry Bird) wants to do that. But it's May (laughing). Q: Larry said he feels he needs to take a greater role in the organization. Will there be a change this summer in how you two handle personnel decisions? A: I'm looking to him to go out and identify what we need to do with the team. Identify the players he thinks would be good for our team. I'm here to help him in any way I can. That's how we've been doing things. But I don't think he was talking about that. I think he was saying he needs to go down and be closer to the players and put his imprint on it. He's been there (as a player and coach). As a general manager or president, you're very hesitant to go down and start talking to the players too much, because then they stop listening to the coach. But he and Rick (Carlisle) have a history together, so it could work for those two. Q: Your contract runs out after next season. Does the fact you might step aside after one more season give you a stronger feeling that you have to get things back on track now? A: You can only work as hard as you can work. Since I've taken this job, I've worked as hard as I can. I don't care what anybody thinks I've done here. At the end of it, I'll tell you guys, I've done everything I could, so you go judge it and figure out what I did. That's it. I don't have anymore to give. I've made some good moves, I've made some stupid moves, I've made some moves in the middle. That's probably where everybody (in this position) comes down. Q: How do you review your performance? A: When I took over, we weren't making the playoffs. Now as I'm leaving, we always make the playoffs, but there are things left to do to win a championship. I'd give you the same answer Reggie (Miller) gave you: I tried. I know where I've done things in my mind I shouldn't have done, or things didn't turn out the way I wanted them to. But you can't go back and correct them, so you have to move on. Q: What's the dumbest thing you've done as far as basketball decisions? A: I wouldn't admit it (laughs). I don't sit around making lists. I guess if it's stupid, I try to forget about it. But you're talking about people when you talk about the players. I invest emotionally in a lot of them. So I would never say it was a dumb move. To me, there's always reasons. Maybe they didn't fit here. Or maybe it got to where they didn't fit here. Like with Jalen Rose. I thought he'd be great here. But (then-coach) Larry Brown hated him, so he never played. I thought, "Oh, no." Then Larry Bird got here and played him and he became a terrific player. Then Isiah came in, and at first I thought it would be great, but it didn't work out, so I traded him. So what should I think of Jalen? He was the same player, but the circumstances kept changing. Q: As you look back on all the injuries the past two years, was it just a stretch of bad luck or were there other factors? A: Look, if there's an answer to that, I'd like to know. I haven't been through anything like this where you're constantly having guys out for 30 or 40 games. I'm challenging our medical people and our players to do things in the summer, but I think they did a lot of that last year. You have to take the good and the bad together. I wish I didn't have to take the bad at this stage of my career. But you can't dictate that. You go through years where everything works out well for you and you go through years where it doesn't seem like anything works out for you. My approach has been, in order to keep a sane level, just keep working as hard as I can. I do love what I do. And it is a challenge when it doesn't work, to see if you can do something about this. It just takes a lot of work, and sometimes some luck, to get out of where we are right now.</div> Source
