“(The Celtics are) not going to hand you anything. You have to earn it, and I felt we did that.”

“(Towns) helped set the tone for the game. He got established (offensively), and then the rebounding and his pick-and-roll defense was outstanding. We were able to play off that.”

“That’s who he is. He impacts the game in a lot of different ways. Sometimes people get stuck on, ‘Well, he didn’t shoot the ball, or he didn’t do this.’ Well, what he is is a basketball player, so it’s transition. It’s the pace. It’s playing out of pocket. It’s making corner 3s. It’s doing all the dribble-handoff, hustle plays, offensive rebounds. And then, defensively being everywhere and coming up with big rebounds. I think when you play with that kind of effort, it’s inspiring to the team.”

“He’s very athletic, he anticipates well. But I thought overall our team commitment and defensive transition, guys were covering for each other, they were communicating really well, they understood what we had to take away in order to win. It doesn’t really matter whether you’re talking about defensive transition or you’re talking about pick-and-roll defense. It has to be clean, it has to be concise and it has to be tied together. When you do that, particularly against a team that’s as well-versed as they are and their ability to shoot and spread you out, you have to be very disciplined. I thought we were tonight.”

“I think the way you have to look at it is whatever your ceiling is, that’s what you’re striving for. You’re trying to go past whatever the expectations are for you. If everyone commits to that, the challenge is to bring the best out of everybody. The goal is always to win a championship. We’ve got eight wins. We need 16. And each one gets harder and harder. So you’ve got to keep fighting, and you’ve got to understand how important that is.”

“The important thing is to understand what goes into winning. It starts with your preparation. We have to know Indiana extremely well and just concentrate on being ready for that first game. In the playoffs, you have to earn your wins. They’re not going to be given to you because you’re at home or on the road. You have to earn them with your play. So I think that’s the most important thing, understanding what goes into your preparation.”

“Style of play, they’re an excellent basketball team. When you look at the guard play, with Haliburton, [Andrew] Nembhard and [T.J.] McConnell, they can push it and break you down off the dribble. So you have to be very disciplined in your approach. They can spread you out. [Pascal] Siakam and [Myles] Turner are very talented bigs. We understand what the challenge is.”

“It’s going to be a tough opponent. They push the pace. They run on makes, misses. And it’s going to be a huge communication series for us. We are going to have to be locked in on every possession. Have to get back defensively. So we can build off this game. I feel our communication was great today and that’s something we can carry into that series. We just have to make sure we are prepared.”

“I feel like we just watched the film [of Game 5] and we kind of discussed our communication and effort and our sense of urgency to start the game. It’s something we knew we had to fix. We had to get stops and we have to communicate better in transition and get out there and play fast and have fun. I think that’s the biggest thing. We focused on communication and defensive transition.”

“We made the emphasis to come out with a lot of energy, to fly around. We corrected what we saw on film and maintained it for the whole game.”

“[Getting to the conference finals is] awesome, but we want to keep going. We’re not content. We want to keep playing.”

“We definitely felt the energy. The way that they’ve been supporting us all year, it’s been remarkable. I’m really happy that we were able to do that.”

“The whole day of Game 5, it just wasn’t us. And we knew that. We reflected on it, and we came back and we said, ‘We need to be ready. We need to be better.’ The way we prepared, the way we talked out there, the way we made it an emphasis to have each other’s back and to continue to cover for each other … focus on the little things, and we did that.”

“I feel like we have a long way to go. Just the confidence we have in each other and everything. Just knowing who we are. We tend to be unsatisfied.”

“The way we prepared, the way we talked out there, the way we made it an emphasis to have each other’s back and to continue to cover for each other (was important). It’s focused on the defensive side of the ball, and when we’re doing that and offense, we’re flowing.”

“We just went out there with a different type of energy.”

“It was time. It was time for us to play with the lead and play tough with the lead, and be the more physical team and outlast them.”

“I always like to live by the 24-hour rule. Enjoy it for the night and tomorrow, heal up and get ready for [the next round].”

“It’s just one step. We’re not satisfied at all. We want to do the same thing next series—get four more.”

“You have that fundamentalist belief that you’ll never lose … (If) you wanna go deep into the playoffs, you gotta have that. And we showed it this series. I think that was really special for us.”

“As long as we believe in each other, we can do something special. And as long as the belief in that locker room is that, we don’t care what anyone outside that locker room says.”

“My teammates trusted me in positions to score, and I’m glad I was able to repay their trust with some buckets. So it’s really a testament to my teammates keeping me involved and allowing me to be aggressive.”

“There’s more to do. We’re not done. That’s what it is. We came out there tonight to play hard and handle business, but our season’s not over. We’ve got so much more to go and we play on Wednesday. So get ready to prepare for them. Whole different team and a whole new series.”

“Obviously, I’m new here, but I just know how much New York loves their sports, especially the Knicks, so just all excited to be a part of it.”

“Something I’ve learned from my vets and just being in the NBA for enough time is to not take winning for granted. This is a special time. Back-to-back Eastern Conference Finals. We’re not done. We’ve still got a ways to go, but it’s a special feeling.”

“We’re different than every other team in the NBA. We don’t just have one guy who scores all the points. We defeat teams in different ways. We move the ball. The ball’s flying. We’ve got a lot of different guys making shots, making plays.”

“I remember being our representative at the [NBA Draft] Lottery a couple years ago and not wanting to go back. It’s special, man. This group is special. This has been built by many different moves. Adding [Siakam] has been huge for us, and we just kind of went from there. I don’t take this for granted.”

“When we got in the summer, we talked about getting better. This is the opportunity, now, to get better, to make sure we take a step. That’s the mentality that we have going into the next game. We have a real opportunity, and we can’t take it for granted.”

On the narrative of these playoffs:

“Cleveland’s banged up. That’s well-documented. But I heard this one time in the year we won in Dallas, and [there was] a lot of stuff about the other team losing the series. Somebody made the comment: The winning team writes the script. I just have to give our guys credit. They earned this.”