Toronto Raptors vs. New Jersey Nets
Tuesday, May 1, 2007 Air Canada Centre

Mitchell

How satisfying is tonights’ win?
Well, we needed a lot of guys. I thought everybody who came in the game gave us something. After losing T.J. (Ford), I thought Jose (Calderon) was unbelievable. Andrea (Bargnani) and Mo (Morris Peterson) played unbelievable, and AP (Anthony Parker). It came down to the last second. They played well in the second half. We just found a way to win.

How important was it to score early in the game…
We just needed to score points. We’ve been struggling to score. We shot the ball well, we tapered off some in the second half which is to be expected. They made some huge shots. We just found a way to win the basketball game. We will come in tomorrow and look at tape, see what we can do, get some treatment on some guys, try to get some guys feeling better. We have to find a way to try to win a game in New Jersey.

What did you learn about your team tonight…
We felt pretty confident that our guys will fight. The two losses in New Jersey were disappointing. After two losses like that you don’t really know how your team is going to do. You hope coming home, the crowd can give you energy and just find a way to play as a team. It took everything and it took everybody. They didn’t go away quietly. It seemed like everytime we needed a basket or a stop, we would never get it.

Peterson

MORRIS PETERSON

How did you guys manage to keep it together tonight…
Well, like we have all year at different parts of the season we’ve had different guys go out and other guys come in and step up. I think Jose did a great job when T.J. went down, he played well and we just kind of rallied around each other and got stops when we needed to.

Thoughts on taking over in the fourth quarter…
Well, he played well. He made shots, he had a lot of open three point shots. But what I wanted to do early on in the game was set the tone, how it’s going to be automatically. You know Vince has hit 30, 40, 50 points numerous amounts of times with guys in his face and he knows how to score. What I wanted to do was set the tone early in the game and let him know how it’s going to be for 48 minutes and if you want to get the win you’re going to have to work for it.

Thoughts on the play of Andrea Bargnani?
Andrea, he didn’t play like a rookie tonight, he made some big plays for us especially in the first half, he did some great things. Everybody knows he can shoot the ball and I think he’s starting to get back at 100 percent. It’s hard when you miss so much time and try to come back and play at this level in the playoffs. It took him a couple of games but tonight he was fine. He has done that all year, whenever coach gets on him or says something to him he responds and that is why he is the number one draft pick.

Bargnani

ANDREA BARGNANI

Thoughts on the difference between the first and second halves….
I don’t know. I hit the first shot, and I just shot if I had an open look. In the second half, I didn’t have too many open looks. i protected the ball and played for the rest of the game.

On the differences between playoffs in the NBA and Europe…
In Europe, the intensity level goes up. Of course here there’s much more talent and much more athleticism. It’s more difficult here.

Bosh

CHRIS BOSH

Thoughts on the game and how hard the team worked…
We jumped out on them pretty good and I think we did a good job keeping our tempo and pushing up on them and not really letting them have much. Offense and defence was great, we moved the ball and we did all the things we talked about to win basketball games.

What was the difference between the first half here compared to in New Jersey?
I think we have more confidence. We pushed up on them a lot more than we usually do. We picked them up full court. We didn’t give Jason Kidd all the passing lanes that they normally have and we made it tougher on them.

Thoughts on Jose Calderon…
Jose (Calderon) did a spectacular job tonight. He made some big shots, especially when they were going under the screens. They paid a lot of attention to me, so that freed him up.

Thoughts on coming back from a 3-1 deficit…
We came through tonight but we have to make sure we do a good job of starting the game off the right way when we are in New Jersey.

Thoughts on tonight…
Well, you know playoff games are always hard you know that is what I have come to find out and it’s just to try and play with the lead and withstand their run. We did a pretty good job and yes it was hard.

Thoughts on players stepping up when others go down…
Yeah, we’ve done it all year. I think we can continue to do that. T.J. went down and Jose stepped up, Jose went down and we had other guys step up. Morris played very well today on the defensive and offensive end and we’ve just had guys step up all year so I think it’s been very characteristic of us to keep doing that.

Frank

Is Jose (Calderon) the guy that hurt you the most?
He played a great game. Jose has played well all year, even when Ford (T.J) went out during the regular season Calderon played at a very, very high level. He is a starting point guard playing in a back-up role and that is one of the reason’s why they are so good. I thought the first half, obviously that first quarter put us in a huge hole, outside of that we outscored them the rest of the way. But you have to give them a lot of credit, they came out Bargnani was great. Parker was great and Calderon was great. Those guys had I think 43 of their 59 points at the half. We played hard to get back. We obviously had some opportunities but it wasn’t enough and you have to give Toronto a lot of credit.

Confidence heading back home?
Momentums are a possession by possession deal and Toronto is obviously feeling better about themselves. We give the victors credit, they deserved to win and now we have to go back, regroup and defend our territory.

What different looks did they throw at Jason Kidd that got him out of sync?
They mixed it up but it was more that we were out of sync that first quarter and from that point on we kind of got our sync back. And just like we jumped on them at home, they jumped on us, but you don’t look at Jason (Kidd) and say how many points he scored that is not even secondary to his game because he does everything else.

Options on final play…
Well, we forced the switch so we had Juan Dixon on Vince (Carter) which was great in terms of size and then we had doubled down Richard (Jefferson) which was the second option and then we had Boki (Bostjan Nachbar) on the side which is the third option. We got the switch, Jason and Vince went back and forth and then Vince got to the lane and delivered it to Boki.

Carter

Thoughts on Boki’s (Bostjan Nachbar) three-point shot at the end of the game…
Boki is a 43 per cent three-point shooter, let’s just say a good three-point shooter and he was wide open and I’ll roll with that any time and I told him that if that play happened again I’m going to make that same play because he is wide open. I probably wanted (the shot) to go in more than he did. He was the guy that was open and it would’ve been a great story for him but it didn’t happen this time.

Why did the Raptors win tonight?
Energy in the beginning more than anything. I think they wanted it a little more than we did in the first quarter, and we had to hurry up and match their intensity before they blew us out of the building. So, we just had to settle down and play Nets basketball and just chip away. In the beginning, when we actually decided to settle down, they were countering our runs which means when we would get it down to 11 or so, they would push it to 16, 17 whatever they case may be. But, at half time we just said let’s play ball our style and come out in the first five minutes to make a statement and see what happens.

Was it do or die for the Raptors tonight?
Of course they are going to try and win this game. They are going to lay it on the line and do what they have to do to get the job done. We understood that, and that’s why we prepared for us to come out and play solid basketball, and just play the same way we did in game three and four. It was just good to see that we were able to settle down and make it a game and give ourselves a chance to win in the last 6 minutes, with a great shot in the last couple seconds.

Thoughts on your performance tonight?
Not enough, we didn’t win.

Kidd

Thoughts on game…
Well, we did get beat. We dug a hole in that first half but we still had confidence. No one was feeling like we were done. We fought back and on the road we wanted to give ourselves a chance to win the game and we did that tonight. So, we can build on that but we have to also understand that we can’t dig a hole like that in the first half.

Thoughts on Jose Calderon…
He played a great game tonight on both ends, defensively and offensively. He carried the team well, he made shots and he took advantage of our scheme so he played a great game.

What went wrong in the first quarter?
Everything. We were just on our heels, we weren’t aggressive and they were. They (Toronto) shot somewhere around 60 per cent so with that, any time you give an offensive team that kind of confidence you are going to find yourself down.

Thoughts on the Raptors ability to come back…
They showed it right off the bat. They came out loose and they made every shot and they got every loose ball. They took advantage of that lead that they built. But I thought that our experience took play in the fourth quarter, having that opportunity again, with six minutes left to win the ball game. We kept fighting but they were the better team tonight.

Jefferson

Did you expect them to come out as aggressive as they did?
Yes of course, you always say you are going to get a teams best shot facing elimination, especially at home. They have had a very successful season and they probably did not want it to end here at home. We didn’t do a very good job matching what they put out.

You just couldn’t seem to get anything going in the first quarter?
Well it was a combination of a lot of things, we couldn’t hit shots, they were hitting shots, and you give them all the credit. We even did some of the things we wanted to, we got Chris Bosh in early foul trouble, but we just couldn’t hit shots. Guys came off, (Anthony) Parker was hot early, and they hit some tough shots early. Give them all the credit. They deserved to win tonight.

The game came down to the last possession…
It doesn’t matter, we could go down by 40 in the first quarter and we are not going to stop fighting, we are not going to stop coming at you, we are not going to stop our intensity. We understand you just have to lock teams out, cut it to ten cut it to six. We had a shot, our best three-point shooter has a wide open look to win the game as time expires. We couldn’t knock that down, but a lot of that is because we didn’t do what we needed to do to start off the game that put us in that position.