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Game 4: Suns 86, Spurs 84
Playoff Quotes
Posted: April 27, 2003
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(On the team’s intensity level)
“I told our guys, ‘we dove for my more loose balls tonight than we probably have the last month and half combined. We wanted it. That intensity level we have to raise it another level. What happens the team that ends up losing the game in order to win the next one they have to bump up the intensity level another level. We’ve got to raise it in order to compete with them, especially on their homecourt.”
(On going small down the stretch)
“The success that we’ve had with them has been with our small lineup, with the four guys and one big, so we had nothing to lose in that situation.”
(On Voskuhl’s game)
“Jake Voskuhl, what can I say? Eighteen minutes, we get a huge shot, and he did a nice job down the stretch defensively.”
(On Marbury’s injury)
“He hurt his elbow. He got a stinger and I think it was in his shoulder when they set that pick. It was a very physical game and what I was really happy about was that they felt our presence in the paint tonight. It took us being knocked around and knocked around, and all the sudden we started fouling hard and started going after it.”
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(On the game-winning shot)
“Penny (Hardaway) got the ball on the wing and he beat his defender and drove, and Tim Duncan was guarding me and he went to help him. Penny just flipped it to me and I just caught it, and shot a hook shot.”
(On Duncan patting him on the butt after his game-winner)
“He said, ‘Good shot.’ He was happy for me.”
(On trailing in the fourth quarter)
“You know what? About halfway through the fourth we were down by about 10 or so and we were really just out of rhythm as a team. It was looking kind of tough and next thing you know we get a steal here and they turn the ball over and next thing you know we started knocking it down, eight, seven, six. Then they make one and it’s back to eight and next thing you know it’s a three-point game and we got the ball.”
(On Stephon Marbury’s leadership)
“I’ll tell you what any guy who plays 40-plus minutes every single night that’s amazing. That guy has been tough for us all year. He’s done awesome things for this team and he’s the heart and soul of this team.”
(On his role on that last play)
“Normally I’m running out and setting a screen, but Penny got by his man and he drove and my defender went to help and he just flipped me the ball and I got it and hit a hook shot.”
(On when was the last time he hit a game-winner)
“That was my first one.”
(On competing against Duncan, Malik Rose and David Robinson)
“Those guys are great. Those guys are competitors. They play hard every single play, but they have a lot of class to them. Just to be able to compete against those guys is an honor.”
(On what the Suns were talking about in the huddle before Duncan’s final shot)
“Basically we just said no three-pointers. We wanted to play them straight-up and not give them any threes and that’s what we tried to do.”
(On what Scott Williams said to him as he rushed on to the court to congratulate him)
“I don’t even know. It was kind of loud in there. I don’t know what he really said.”
(On the series now tied 2-2)
“This is big for us. This was a must win for us tonight. Going into San Antonio down 3-1 is a really difficult situation to be in. We needed this one. Everyone stepped up and played hard, and we got it.”
(On filling in for a fouled out Stoudemire)
“That’s normally a difficult situation because Amaré is in the game and he’s in rhythm and he’s been in awhile. He was doing really good for us, but he picked up that sixth foul and then you’re sitting there and you have to go in. You just in a situation like that play solid and play solid defense. That’s what you try to do and somehow it just worked out.”
(On his emotions after the shot)
“As soon as I hit it I was just thinking about getting back on defense. I don’t know if you guys remember we played Denver earlier this year and someone hit a shot with two seconds left and we were celebrating and they launch it from inbounds and lay it in and they won the game.”
(On the Suns’ comeback)
“I think it shows the resilience of this team. I think it started with coach Johnson and what he has brought to this team and his attitude. We’ve kind of fed off him and he’s poured it into Steph and we’ve fed off Steph and it has all trickled down. Right now everyone is on the same page. This is about a team winning basketball games. It’s not about any individuals or I’s or me’s. Everyone is just coming together. At a professional level that is just such a fun thing to be a part of.”
(On the home crowd)
“We were feeding off the crowd. It was hard for them to score the last five, six minutes.”
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(On his injury)
“It was my arm. Every time I hit it I get a stinger. My arm just tingles and then it goes numb. Tonight I thought I had a broken wrist, because I couldn’t break my fall when I fell. I couldn’t feel anything and I couldn’t shoot. My teammates could tell I couldn’t shoot when I tried shooting free throws. It feels much better now. I’ll be ready to play in Game 5. I was going to make something happen. I was going to make something out of nothing. If I got fouled, or took the ball to the basket, I was going to make something happen. I wanted the last shot, but at the same time I knew I wasn’t going to take a jump shot, because I couldn’t shoot.
“I had no feeling in my arm. Every time I went to pass the ball, I had to really concentrate when I was passing and everything that I did I had to really concentrate on doing it.”
(On the final play)
“I was going to take it one-on-one, but then I saw Malik (Rose) coming over. As soon as I saw him I got the ball to Penny and he cut across the lane. After that, I don’t even know what happened. I just saw Jake (Voskuhl) tipping it in.”
“Jake Voskuhl has just been huge for us all the way around. There are things he can’t do but there are a lot of things that he can do. He plays with energy, he sets picks. Sometimes he gets out into fouls-land, but I’d rather him get offensive fouls than not setting picks.”
(On the team stepping up)
“Joe and Penny were huge for us. Joe has been in a little bit of a slump the last couple of nights and he reads the stats sheet just like the rest of us. But he hit a few big shots for us, and that helped him get going. He was really focused in the shootaround. Yesterday in practice he was very focused and I could just tell. His demeanor was totally different. He came in tonight with the attitude tonight that he was going to come out and play his game. When Joe Johnson is playing well, it’s hard to beat us because he’s our third or fourth scorer.”
(On his emotions)
“I feel great. Like I said, we still haven’t played our best game yet as a team. We still have not clicked all together. They threw their best punches at us again. We didn’t allow Tim Duncan to kill us. We allowed him to get his. We mixed it up tonight. We didn’t feed him a steady diet.
(On fighting back)
“When our backs are up against the wall we respond. We’ve been doing it all year. All our beat writers, they know that we respond quick. Losing that (Game 3) and losing that game the way we did it was tough. It wasn’t fun at all. I know I couldn’t sleep. I couldn’t sleep at all because of the way we played, knowing how we played the first two games and to come home and give that type of effort, it was terrible.”
(On the Suns’ small lineup)
“You’ve got Tim Duncan guarding a small. You’ve got Malik Rose guarding a small. Those guys can’t guard our smalls, so it causes havoc. They’ve been pushing pick and rolls down to the baseline to try to send us to their big men. Tonight we just attacked. We didn’t care where they were. We just continued to attack all day long.”
(On his teammates helping pick up the slack)
“It was great. Them guys stepped up and did exactly what they were supposed to do. Me being one of those guys that they know in the fourth quarter, I usually get it going in the fourth. They said, ‘I’m going to get it going in the fourth quarter tonight.’ They knew that I was hurt. They knew that I couldn’t shoot. When I shot my free throws everybody knew that my arm was messed up, but it’s great to know that they sensed that right away. They didn’t wait until almost the end of the game to respond. They responded immediately.”
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“We was getting stops and getting to the line going straight to the basket and getting free throws. We were knocking them down and that’s what you got to do.”
(On the play of Jake Voskuhl and Joe Johnson)
“Jake came in and played big minutes for us tonight, and both of them contributed on the offensive end and gave us a boost a little bit.”
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(On the Voskuhl’s game winner)
“That last play Penny makes a great move to the basket and Jake comes to the ball and is real strong and puts up a nice shot, a shot he’s been working on for this whole season, so it’s good to see him make it.
“They’re keying on the main guys and a lot of times it’s the peripheral guys that need to step up and he ducked in and they probably weren’t too worried about him, maybe a little more worried about all the guys on the perimeter, but he stepped in there, caught it and made a nice jumper.”
(On getting some playing time)
"It felt good. I hadn’t played in probably about a month and a half. It felt good to get in there and help even it was for a short period of time. Try to rest some guys, keep them out of foul trouble for the fourth quarter."
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(On the team’s determination)
“That’s every player on this team. We never quit. No matter the situation, no matter if we’re down 50 points. We’re never going to give up. That’s a good mentality for us. Every game is very important for us. We’re going to go out there and play 100 percent. We’ve got to raise our intensity and we got to get a win.”
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(On the team playing with more intensity)
“It’s just a decision we made. We’ve got to come out and we’ve got to be aggressive. I still don’t feel like we’ve played Phoenix Suns basketball for the whole series.”
(On fighting back from the double-digit deficit)
“We never give up. We were down 12 but we’ve been in a situation like that before. We came out in the fourth quarter and we picked up the intensity. We made some big plays at the end of the game.”
(On the Suns’ bench)
“I feel like it’s going to be hard for the Phoenix Suns to go far in the playoffs without some contribution off the bench. In the fourth quarter, I just came out with nothing to lose. I said, ‘If I don’t be aggressive then it’s going to be tough for us to win this game.’ Steph hurt his arm and it was tough for him, so I just tried to take some pressure off.”
(On Voskuhl’s play)
“It was good. Jake is a guy who comes off the bench and gives us energy every game. He had his ups and downs during this game. Down in the stretch, he took his time and he knocked down a big basket for us.”
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“It was designed for Stephon, but they went to double him to get the ball out of his hands and make someone else beat him and he threw it to me and I just threw the ball to the basket trying to make a play happen. If Tim Duncan wouldn’t have stepped up I was going to shoot a little runner but since he stepped up, I gave it to Jake and Jake finished it.”
(On Marbury playing through pain)
“You know what? Steph’s been doing that all season long. He’s a warrior. He’s just relentless when he’s out there and he’s never going to give up, and that’s how our team goes. We never give up. We’ve had our backs against the wall all year and tonight was another game, and Steph came through for us.”
(On the team’s confidence)
“We believe in ourselves. Ever since training camp, we just believed in what we can do. At any given time we feel like anybody on that floor can make a big play and Jake made a huge play. It wasn’t an easy shot that he made because Tim did have a chance to contest it, but he finished it.”
(On Joe Johnson)
“He looked more comfortable in that fourth quarter because he was getting very aggressive and attacking the basket as he normally does. Hopefully that will get him going.”
(On Voskuhl’s effort)
“Jake, he’s a guy that works so hard. He never gets the whistle on his side. He always gets it called against him. He has to keep playing hard. He’s playing the best players in the league. He has to play Tim Duncan, David Robinson and those guys down there, and it’s a tough job. But he keeps working, offensive rebounds, defensive rebounds, blocked shots, taking charges. You can’t say enough about the guy.”
(On battling back in the fourth)
“It means a lot. Our fans kept us in the game. They were really loud. They kept the energy going. We knew not to ever give up, because that’s just like Game 1. They kept pushing out on us, we kept coming back, pushing out on us and we never gave up, and we won the game. So we had that in the back of our minds and it happened again.”
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(On Phoenix Game winning shot)
“We had a switch out top and Penny drove right down the middle. The guy kind of stepped over to help him and Jake made himself available and Penny dropped it off and it was a good shot right over top of me.”
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(On the Suns’ game-winning shot)
“Malik (Rose) came double-teaming and I don’t know why. (Voskuhl) hit a little floater and he was wide open. Everybody can make that shot. It wasn’t very good defense. ”
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