Sacramento Head Coach Rick Adelman

Rick Adelman

“Obviously, we are just really excited. I can’t say enough about this group. What they did in Dallas, and then what they did here. We wanted to come out and put pressure on Dallas tonight. We didn’t want them to get life. We wanted to stay on top of them. It seems like on this team, someone always steps up. Tonight it was Hedo; he exploded on them. We had such faith in him. He plays such a great all-around game, defending and rebounding. Mike Bibby has just been terrific this whole series. I don’t know where you start, or where you end. This group, without Peja, took it upon themselves to win this thing. Now we move on to the next round. Hopefully we will have a few days to rest and get some of our people who are banged up rested.”

---

Kings center Vlade Divac

Vlade Divac

“This was a great night for us, but it was just another step toward our ultimate goal. We are going to celebrate tonight, but tomorrow it is just a whole other deal. We have to focus and prepare for the next series. We have built something special here in the last four years and every year we move forward, and we really want to move forward in the next year.”

---

Kings guard Bobby Jackson

Bobby Jackson

“We are excited and happy after tonight’s win. We’ve worked hard, and it’s nice to see that all our hard work in the off-season and last summer is really starting to pay off. We are looking forward to the next round. This is the first time for this franchise and the first time for a lot of these players to make it this far in the playoffs. We have just got to take time to really enjoy this moment and then get back to work. The day off tomorrow is going to be nice. We haven’t had a day off in a long time. But after tomorrow, it’s back to work.”

---

Kings forward Hedo Tukoglu

Hidayet Turkoglu

“I really feel good right now, after breaking out of my slump. Finally today I started making some of my shots. I think my confidence came back. I know I am going to help my teammates in the finals. Tonight’s game was really important for me. I did the same thing tonight that I have done in the past; I started making my shots. All the guys keep telling me to be aggressive, your shots will come.

---

Kings forward Chris Webber

Chris Webber

“I don’t want to get caught up thinking about this win. Hopefully, we have a longer road ahead. In my nine year career, this is the farthest I’ve been, and it feels good. It feels good right now, but we still have more work to do. Four years ago, we came together with the goal to win a championship. We have stuck with it. This isn’t something we have just started this year, this is something that we have been building on. I think that this says that we are all goal-oriented, and once we make a goal, we stick with it.”

---

Kings guard Mike Bibby

Mike Bibby

“The whole thing has got me very motivated. I am ready for the Western Conference Finals, and the Finals. Everyone gave the advantage to the Mavericks, and that kind of motivated us. It really doesn’t matter what people outside us think. We know what we are capable of doing, we’ve just got to keep rolling.”

---

Mavs Head Coach Don Nelson

Don Nelson

“What a great experience for our team to go through. I just love my team so much, and how hard they played. We have a lot of growing to do to get at the level that the Kings are at. We’re working hard at it. I can’t say it was a great series, because great series last more than five games. But I will say there were a lot of great games. It was so much fun to go through this process. It’s so good for my team. I’m very proud of my team. We had such a wonderful year. So many ups, very few downs, and we were beaten in a series by a better team. The Kings are a better team, they deserve to win.”

---

Mavs center Raef LaFrentz

Raef LaFrentz

“You have to take your hat off to them. They played a great series, and they beat us playing our style. That’s really all you can say. They had a good defensive scheme; took us out of our rhythum. It was a tough series. I said from the beginning that the team that hits their shots, and maintains their style is going to win. They were able hit big shots the entire series. They showed a wide variety of character. Bobby Jackson played outstanding. We never really did a good job of maintaining their pick and roll, and if you want to X and O it that’s the bottom line. The pick and roll killed us.”

---

Mavs guard Nick Van Exel

Nick Van Exel

“They continued to make big shots. And the hustle plays, they continued to get. Throughout the series they got too many easy buckets. They sort of exploited us on our pick and roll coverage, our pick and roll defense, and they plain out won the series. It was hard to get a string of stops the whole series. They’re a pretty good offensive team, and they really made our defense look bad. We didn’t play good defense, that’s the bottom line.”

---

Mavs guard Steve Nash

Steve Nash

“I think the reason we lost this series has little to do with experience as people may make it out to be. I don’t think we lived up to our capabilities with some of our key structures. Maybe we do have to take steps, maybe not. I guess the future will tell. We have to im prove defensively, there is no question about that. But I don’t think we have to completely change our style. We just have to get better defensively.”

---

Mavs guard Mike Finley

Mike Finley

“We’ve come a long way as a team in this organization, since the time I’ve been here. In the postseason I’m very proud of the team, I’m very proud of the individuals on the team. With the good things, come bad things. With the success of our team, I’ve had high expectations. Not just to get to this round, but to advance to the next round. But unfortunately for us, we’ve met a Sacramento team that was playing good basketball. They played better than us for four games, and that’s all they needed to do, and I wished them luck.