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| Sunday, April 17, 2011 Final Score: New Orleans 109, Los Angeles 100 Hornets Post Game Quotes
On beating the heavily favored Lakers: “I’m glad our guys came to fight-- that was the mantra for the week. We said that we had to be strong and courageous no matter what the situation. You’re playing against the defending champs, who we have so much respect for-- the way they play the game, what they’ve done over the years, and we can’t match that with anything else but fight, and so we got a big win, the biggest win of the year.” On his feelings about his team’s performance: “I’m happy about a number of things but all of our guys contributed tonight. Everybody who stepped on that floor made a major contribution, and we’re going to have to be ready in the next game.” On if tonight’s win shocked him: “I’m not shocked, but I am pleasantly surprised. We haven’t beaten them all year. I’m not going to disrespect our team and sit here and say, “I’m shocked.” We go out and try to win every game so when we do we’re not shocked but pleasantly surprised that we came out and played the way we did.” On the Hornets bench play: “I think we got 39 points from our bench. I thought they were really effective.” On defending Kobe Bryant: “We tried to be physical with him. Trevor Ariza did a good job on him tonight. You’re not going to stop him, we know that. The thing that we did tonight was keep everyone else at bay." On Chris Paul’s performance and execution: “When he’s fresh nobody can stay in front of him. The pick and roll is what he does and sometimes I tend to mess with the game by trying to run too many “basketball sets” when sometimes I just need to give him the ball and let him go to work. He and I were on the same page tonight as far as calling plays.” On the series moving forward: “We still have to do the same thing. No, I take that back we have to do more of what we did tonight, we have to have more because we’re playing against the defending champs.”
On the bench’s performance in today’s game: “It was very important. That’s why we were able to win this game. AG [Aaron Gray] was outstanding, just his presence on the boys, not really letting those guys get deep post positions. [Jarrett Jack], he’s been outstanding after All-Star break, leading our team, he was good for us tonight.” On his performance in today’s game: “Yeah, I just felt good tonight. The guys will tell you I’ve struggled all season long, you know, trying to figure out where to pick my spots, but it’s the Playoffs, it’s the Playoffs, man. It’s a whole nother energy, it’s a whole nother thing. We came over here last night, a bunch of us, and got shots done. I don’t know, I don’t really know what to say, it was a good game for us tonight.” On needing the win today for “belief”: “No, we needed to win, we needed to beat them so we had one game in the seven game series. It’s one of those things, I’m not a huge vet, but I’ve been in the NBA six years and played in the Playoffs before and the regular season doesn’t matter. There’s teams that win 60 games, there’s teams that win 45 games, and once you get into the Playoffs you have a clean slate. And that’s how we tried to approach this game.” On if the Lakers lacked energy in today’s game: “I wouldn’t say they lacked energy. Those guys played effectively, you know, Kobe got it going, got it going there for a stretch, and I think our team showed a lot of poise in that we weathered the storm. We know, two time defending champs, they don’t make a run there’s a problem. It’s gonna be a long series. It’s one game for us, and we’re gonna go back to the drawing boards, see what we did well, see what we did wrong and get ready for Wednesday.” On what it means to be playing the Lakers in the first round of the Playoffs: “…I know for us, we didn’t finish the season as strong as we would’ve liked to, so in all of our practices we were focusing on us. We’re not good enough to judge who we want to play. We just had to make sure we would be ready no matter who it was. And that’s the thing about our team, since day one everyone has had a chip on their shoulder. We lost [David West], we’ve just been through all different kinds of circumstances.” On if he finds himself lying back too much versus being too aggressive: “I just try to pick my spots. And the thing is, while you want to be aggressive, sometimes you can be overly aggressive to a fault and you can lose your rhythm. I’ve always been a pass first point guard, I always want to get my teammates involved, and tonight the fourth quarter just called for me to be more aggressive ‘cause a lot of times people will be looking for me to pass and that opens up the shot.
On the game tonight: “We played tough tonight. We gave ourselves a chance by playing aggressive, attacking the basket…” On the importance of getting off to a good start against the Lakers: “It’s very important, they’re a really good team, they have a lot of talent on the team and I feel when we play aggressive and try to come out first and do what we know how to do I think we give ourselves a chance.” On how they’re quickness played a great role in the game tonight: “We just play, what do we have to lose? We’re out here just playing basketball.”
On how it feels to ‘shock the world’ with this win: “It feels good to get this win, but like I said, we can’t take any steps back. That team right there [Lakers] is a great team, great players, and we expect them to come out next game and turn it up another notch. We’re going to celebrate tonight, but we know we have a lot of work ahead of us.” On Chris Paul’s performance: “Unbelievable, single handedly took over the game at the end. That’s why he’s one of the best point guards in the NBA.” On the team win tonight: “I think the good thing about this win is everybody came in and contributed, everybody played well and we’re going to need everybody, every game, every second, every minute. Tonight was a good feeling to win this game.”
On every guy on the team scoring tonight: “When our starters are playing we constantly talk to our group; “be ready,” individually I might say be ready AG [Aaron Gray], Willie [Green] might say be ready Jarrett [Jack]. We’re constantly just keeping each other in to the ball game. If you didn’t notice when we make plays all of us are standing up cheering the guys on…like I said we just try to come in and sustain that same energy and emphasis that the starters put out…” Lakers Post Game Quotes
On the Lakers second half play: “I thought we kind of arose from the dead in the third quarter and we got ourselves straightened out but then we went right back out and complicated things in the fourth.” On Chris Paul’s performance: “[Chris] Paul was terrific out there [in the fourth quarter] controlling the ball and the pace of the game and made some easy baskets.” On Paul Gasol’s performance: “There wasn’t a lot of direction going towards [Pau Gasol]. There wasn’t a lot of balls in the post. We didn’t get the ball inside which is one of our strengths.” On the Lakers energy: “Our defense, I thought was late. I think we were late on everything. They were the aggressors, they stayed aggressive and beat us to balls; most typically the one that was a jump ball after an errant shot that crotched the rim, you know that was a key play for us, and them when they got a tip against our biggest guy.” On the Lakers performance in morning games: “We’re not very good in mornings, morning games. We’re not that, our guys just aren’t really sharp all year. We really tried to get them going today; we asked them to come a couple of hours early, even, to the arena, so that they would be ready to go. We really weren’t animated and really aggressive. I thought Ron [Artest] was probably our best player we had out there today.” On the game in the paint: “They’re staying in the lane, they’re crowding the lane, they’re staying back. They had Gray outplaying our big guys today.”
On if he was surprised by the loss today: “No. It’s very tough to beat a team in the league that many times in a row. They come out extremely motivated and very well prepared, and they played extremely well. Chris is a handful for anybody to deal with. They did a great job with their game plan and they executed extremely well.” On Pau Gasol: “Pau is our guy. He’s our guy, he’s the next in line. Responsibility and the pressure comes along with that, and he’ll be ready to go next game.” On why the Hornets came out with a lot of energy tonight: “I’m not sure. I think when you beat a team that many times in a row, they’re extremely motivated. They hear all the chatter of ‘sweep this, sweep that’ and they naturally come out more motivated…it seemed like that tonight.” On how to deal with Chris Paul: “You have to keep him out of the lane as much as possible. He got into our middle way too often. We allowed him to play one-on-one at the top of the key when he had a good rhythm going.” On the importance of the Lakers' forwards and centers playing well: “Well, I mean you have two really good bigs. It’s important for them to play well, to be aggressive and to attack.” On looking forward to Pau Gasol’s play next game: “…I think this game here, he’s going to use that as motivation coming back in Game 2, and be ready to go. I have no doubt about it.”
On today’s game: “It’s always good for us, when I think about the personality of our team, to be humbled a little bit. Sometimes, that’s the best thing for us, to be humbled. To lose on our homecourt, in the playoffs, probably against a team that people think we should handle easy, I think is good for us.” On how the Lakers fix the mistakes they made today: “By going in and watching the tape, and just learning. It’s like life. Something hits you and hopefully you learn from it and get better.”
On if he felt the Lakers had their normal focus today: “I didn’t feel that, but I do think that we need to start going hard in practice. That’s one thing that’s kind of lacking. I don’t know if it’s due to health or a myriad of different reasons, but I think that’s a big part of it.” On if the Lakers can “flip the switch”: “We never believed in that flipping the switch. That’s something from the media. It makes a good story. But at the end of the day, today was all about defense.” On if he’s angry about how the Lakers played today: “I think defensively, we have a lot to work on, but anger is not going to solve it. We just have to have the willingness to go out there and do what it is that we practice in walk-through."
On his performance today: “I was just not very sharp. I couldn’t get into a good rhythm in the first quarter. I didn’t get myself going at all. So it’s up to me to get some energy out there and be a little more aggressive and find ways to find that rhythm.” On how he and the Lakers can bounce back: “It was a lot about aggressiveness and focus. They played well and we didn’t play that well. We didn’t force many turnovers. They shot the ball well and we allowed Chris [Paul] to run the tempo the way that they wanted to. So we just have to come out with a little more focus and stick to our gameplan and be more aggressive overall.” On the loss: “I’m disappointed. I’m stunned, surprised, but we’re the ones responsible for this happening. Unfortunately, we have to own up to that and come back to work the next couple days and get the series where we want it to be.” |
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