Post Game Quotes -- Jan. 19, 2007

George Karl - Denver Nuggets Head Coach
On Camby
"I thought he played like an all-star center tonight. He had great presence on the court and I thought his offense was great. I thought we beat a great team tonight. It will be great to have Melo back on Monday. With him in the lineup, we will have a ten man rotation we can go with. When we move the ball and don’ take bad shots, I think we are a great team. Right now, Steve Blake is very important to us in a strange way. We need him on the court. I don’t think it matters if J.R. comes off the bench.”

Allen Iverson - Nuggets Guard
“We’ll take it how we can get it, a win is a win. Regardless if it is 50 points or one point we’ll take it. It would have been a bad feeling if we didn’t get it. So I’d rather the results be like they were."

On Anthony coming back
“The boost is going to be getting him back. It’s as simple as that. If he plays in a game like this and we have a big lead like that, chances are they won’t get back in the game. He is such a big part of our team that not having him in the lineup is tough for us. You have to take your hat off to the guys that have been playing while he was out because they are approaching every game the same way, trying to get wins and trying to play the game together. We’re just trying to hold the fort down until he gets back. One more to go."

On Camby’s play
"He set the tempo early in the game. He was doing a lot of positive things on offensive end, rebounded the ball well, and he played good defense. I don’t think Ilgauskas hurt us as much as he usually does.”

J.R. Smith - Nuggets Guard
"No matter what they do to try to come back, we just have to get a win. Whether it is by one or by thirty, it doesn’t really matter as long as you get a 'W'. That’s probably the best we’ve played all season, everything was clicking for us. We were getting offensive fouls, everybody was running the floor getting easy points, and that’s what it’s about."

On Camby’s performance
"It was great. I love seeing him score that many points, hit that many open shots like that. I know he’s going to be talking junk on the plane."

On his big dunks
"It’s great because it picks my head up. I was 1 for 5 tonight, but as long as I got those two dunks, the fans got into it, and we win, that’s all that matters."

CAVALIERS QUOTES

Mike Brown - Cleveland Cavaliers Head Coach
"Don’t know what it is yet, but I think we’ll find out. We’ve kind of gotten away from our identity these last three games. We face teams out West that like to get out and run, and we’ve fallen into the trap of trying to get out and run with them. I think our guys will realize it sooner than later. Offensively we’re bad, yes we will be bad offensively if we come down and take the first shot, if we come down and take the first jump shot without moving the basketball, if we come down and take a shot after one pass. That is what we did tonight. That’s the way the Denver Nuggets play, that’s the way the Seattle SuperSonics play, that’s how teams play out West. They want to get up and down the floor, and if we fall into that trap, we will get beat every single time we are on the floor. We may get lucky every once in a while and pull out a win, but that is not how we play the game of basketball."

LeBron James - Cavaliers Forward
On Iverson’s importance to the game
"Of course, he is very important to this game. He changed a lot of aspects of the game. Guys wearing tattoos, just trying to go out there and just play. You accept me for who I am, or you don’t accept me at all. If it wasn’t for Allen Iverson, a lot of guys in this league wouldn’t be who they really are. He’s definitely a pioneer to this league."

On what went wrong tonight
"We did a poor job in the first half of allowing them to get out and run. We took a few early jumpers, and that’s what a team like this wants you to do so they can get out and run. Against a team like this, you’ve just got to try to slow it down as much as possible, and in their building they are very tough. We just have to regroup."

On his feeling about the Nuggets when Anthony returns
"They definitely are going to be a dangerous team. When you get guys coming off the bench like Nene, and J.R. Smith, and then you add Anthony into the starting lineup. I think Steve Blake has really helped them too. The way he pushes the ball up the court, it allows Allen not to dominate the ball up the court 94 feet. They will be a very dangerous team in the West.”

Larry Hughes - Cavaliers Guard
“We knew they were going to let us back into the game, but we just couldn’t get over that hump. We just wanted to play hard the whole game. We came out and tried to adjust to what they were doing, obviously they weren’t going to allow us to get the open looks. We understood that they were 0-13 when they score under 100 points, but that’s a good team over there and they can score the ball."