“For my career, I was really lucky,” Deng said. “I had a lot of ups and downs with Scott Skiles. As I think back, I really appreciate everything he put me through and so did (assistant coach) Ron Adams. There were games when Scott Skiles didn't play me the whole second half and there were games where he didn't run a single play for me. Later on, when I look at those things, those were the things that kept me in the league because coming in, he wanted me to play better defense, I didn't play defense in the beginning. Later on, I became known as a guy who plays defense. So who you come under coaching-wise really matters.