 |
|||||||
| Sunday, April 19, 2009 Final Score: Denver 113, New Orleans 84 Hornets Post Game Quotes
“I just thought Kenyon did a really good job on West. I think one thing we have to do is get him open a little bit more. He was stationary and that makes him easy to guard. Plus you have to give Kenyon a lot of respect on that end of the court. He is a very good, strong, defensive player. He is strong and quick. If you don’t give him movement, if you just stand around and try to pound it inside he doesn’t give a lot of ground. We just have to do a better job of getting him to move more." On Chauncey Billups: "I thought that the match-up on him with Rasual Butler was kind of easy for him to get by him when he wanted to and when Rasual gave him space he knocked down threes. When he is that hot and making shots at that kind of rate it is almost impossible to stop him.”
On Chauncey Billups: "Three or four minutes into it, he’s already got 30. He makes those shots. You always talk about Chauncey, he makes big shots. We just couldn’t stop him tonight." On the second half: "I still got in the lane. We just missed some easy shots. Even West, he had a lot of good looks. That’s the best thing about the situation; we lose by 29 tonight, but it’s only 1-0. We can still come back." On losing this bad: "I think it makes you more hungry. It’s not about how many you win or lose by; it’s about letting that game go and getting the next one." On the bench: "It’s very important. David West said we were going to need everyone. I can’t score 30, he can’t score 30; we just need everyone to be out there and be aggressive and make our presence felt.” game is a big game. We’re fine. We would have liked to finish the season 13-0, but it probably wasn’t going to happen. We’ve just got to continue to play hard and get ready for the Knicks.”
“He got it going, he was building up a transition and at the same time he was attacking the basket to get to the free-throw line. We had no answer to their perform tonight. It’s the first game. Come back tomorrow, look at tape and come up with another game plan. Try to get the next one. We can’t put our head down now. We have a long series ahead of us. The tape will help us a lot, but at the same time we have to have a better effort.” Nuggets Post Game Quotes
“It was a big time show in playoff basketball for Chauncey. He was good in his play making, he was good defensively. Kenyon was a little bit better defensively. His confidence and his three-ball were exuberant. I don’t think we had very many bad possessions on Chris Paul. Kenyon’s defense on West could not have been better. Every one is going to talk about Chauncey and his 8 threes and his 36 points, but I think our defense kept us in the game. We need to stay hungry and stay humble. I was a little surprised when Coach Scott bailed when he did in the fourth quarter.”
Did you have to pick up offense 5 minutes in? I wanted to be aggressive. Safe for me to say, our entire team wanted to be aggressive. We had some good opportunities early, but we couldn’t knock them down. It wasn’t my shots or Melo’s plays it was our defense that won us this game. People are going to talk about how I hit shots, hit threes and how the guys kind of rallied around me, but that was all secondary. Our defense is really what won this game for us and us being locked into the concepts that we laid down in the last three days of preparation. First playoff game with Nuggets: "It’s special, especially for someone like me who grew up here all my life and rooted for the home town team all my life. For me to have a chance to be playing in the playoffs on a really good team, at home, in front of all my family and all my fans, it’s special. It’s just a feeling that you have when you are playing at home. A lot of people never really get to experience, so I’m grateful for that.”
“We did our homework, we did it good. Our job we stepped it hard, played hard against them. Shared the ball, defended good against the pick-and-roll. We need to play better than the first game next time, a little more focused." Do you feel you score easily down low? "I don’t know, it’s a hard job right there. It’s a lot of contact.” |
   |
||||||
