On the Sonics playing without Rashard Lewis - “It’s a Coaches nightmare usually when somebody sits out. You worry about a team playing inspired basketball knowing that they are up against it. You worry about subconsciously letting down. You talk about it and that sort of thing but sometimes it doesn’t make any difference. It was a real disappointing game in that regard.”

On his team - “You can’t play for 12 or 20 or 24 minutes of the game. You can’t do that. You have to maintain playing hard, smart and playing together. We didn’t to that at all.”

“Its not about Duncan or Parker of Ginobili, it’s about a team. Seattle played with great aggressiveness and that carries over to offensive execution…boards, defense, loose balls, all that sort of thing. There wasn’t anything special tonight about Tony Parker than there was about anybody else.

On if the three guard offense Seattle used to start the game caused the Spurs any problems - “None other than Antonio (Daniels) was great and he kicked our butts so I would say that it gave us some trouble.”

On the Spurs offense going through Duncan - “That’s what we try to do. We saw that he was being aggressive and playing a good game so we try to feed him. That’s our game. We kept attacking and Tim was taking good shots so that’s our game so we did that pretty well. Defensively we were not there and too many turnovers.”

“We might have been in too much of a hurry. We didn’t take our time; we maybe tried to force it a little. We can’t afford that. You can’t get all those turnovers on the road. It just gives Seattle opportunities to get some easy baskets.”

On what’s next - “We still have home court advantage and we need to take care of that on Tuesday. It’s a big game now for us. We couldn’t do it here in Seattle so we definitely need to win at home.”

Our bigs did a nice job of playing together. I thought the Nick and Danny combination was pretty good for us against their small unit. Making stops and allowing our guards to get out into transition in that third quarter and that’s when we broke the game open.

On the third quarter - We wanted to push the ball and I felt like we could tonight, with three guards being in the lineup. Antonio (Daniels) did a nice job again tonight. By having Ray (Allen), Luke and Antonio in the game we wanted to keep pressure on their defense. We didn’t turn the ball over except, I think, one time in the third quarter. We got stops in that third quarter which led to some easy baskets. I thought our bigs, Jerome (James), Nick (Collison), Reggie (Evans), and Danny (Fortson) came in there tonight and did a nice job of coming in and setting screens. Our spacing was really good. It starts on the defensive end of the floor. We got into a rhythm and scored 36 points in that quarter.

On Luke Ridnour): That’s what Luke has in him. It was just an all-star coming out. He started doing what he is capable of doing. I’ve told him all year to play like he used to play at Oregon. He’s going to make plays and he’s going to turn the ball over. Who doesn’t turn the ball over? Just go out there and play basketball, and he did that.

On looking for his shot - It’s been open I just haven’t looked for it. Tonight I just came out and had some good looks and was able to hit some lay-ups and get going. That definitely helped. The main thing is that I came out aggressive.

On the playoffs - It’s definitely different. Just the intensity of every possession and the strategy. It’s like a chess match every game. You’re trying to change a little bit just to get an advantage. Against a team like San Antonio it’s tough. It’s going to be tough to finish it but this is a good start.