Posted: Oct 31 2008 3:31AM
Terry Porter | 
Amar'e Stoudemire | 
Raja Bell | 
Byron Scott |
Chris Paul | 
Morris Peterson |
Click on a player to read quotes
| Suns Head Coach Terry Porter
(Opening Statement)
“Well, it was a disappointing way to have our home opener, obviously after a good game last night. Turnovers really hurt us tonight, and they shot the ball well from three point land. Whenever we gave ourselves a chance to get back in the game, we seemed to shoot ourselves in the foot. One mistake lead to another, we just never got back into a flow at that point. Maybe we let the referees bother us too much in the first half and then in the second half I thought our guys came out and really competed, and got back and gave ourselves a chance. Down the stretch again, there were a couple of times when we really needed a possession. They got those two or three offensive rebounds that kind of hurt and then they a hit a three and that really did it for us. All in all, it was just a disappoint night, we just didn’t bring it. From the start we just didn’t have it and that was disappointing.
(On turnovers)
“I just thought that we tried to force things when we didn’t need to, it really hurt us with the turnovers. Turnovers lead to easy baskets. When you give up easy baskets in this league and you let a team shoot 54 percent, you’re going to really struggle. There were times when we couldn’t score, but we were still doing a good job defensively. We still didn’t let those guys get a lot of big numbers in a quarter. The first quarter was the only that they really hurt us. It goes back to the turnovers and us not doing a good enough job from the start of the game being ready to play.”
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| Amar'e Stoudemire
(On icing his hand): “It’s my pinky, it’s my dislocated pinky. That happened back in the last pre-season game and I’m always icing it.”
(On slow start): “We started off slow with the energy. We have to have high energy. Our fans came anticipating it and ready to see us out there playing. I was extremely amped and I was so ready to play. We just have to come with the energy as a collective group and be ready to take on guys and teams that are supposedly superior.”
(On Hornets’ scoring): “They came out of the time out ready to play. We covered the three and I think we did a great job with the second unit. They did a great job with the energy cutting that score down to three and it was our time to put our foot down. We did for a second there but then they got hot, hit a couple jumpers, and the game was over. So we have to do a better job once we get that lead cut down from 12 to three, that’s our time to win the game. So as a team we have to understand that and we have to bring that energy definitely during that stretch when we’re only down three as opposed to 12.”
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| Raja Bell
(On the game): “We’re still a work in progress and there’s going to be some bumps along the way. Not every night is going to be a well-oiled machine out there on the court. So we’ll have to go back to the drawing board and keep working. The key is to not string them back-to-back like that if we can learn from tonight and bounce back. Like I said, we’re a work in progress and we have to continue to get better and continue to feel our way around the system and what we need to do.”
(On not being able to get over hump): “They hit a lot of shots. They were making leaning three-point shots and they were making some really tough shots. You can say we didn’t play good defense and I’m sure that’s part of it. But they jumped on us early and they took the life out of us on an emotional night. It was our home opener and they did a good job.”
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| Hornets Head Coach Byron Scott
“We did a great job of keeping our hands active and forcing a bunch of turnovers tonight. We shot the ball great, but too many layups, too many points in the paint. We’ve got to do a better job of closing down that paint. Another gutsy win from a team missing it’s star center in Tyson and then to lose Peja in the fourth quarter. It’s just a great win for us to come in here and beat them on their home floor. “ |
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| Chris Paul
“Anytime you play against the Suns, it’s going to be up tempo and fast. I can honestly say I got a little winded tonight. I was going to play the whole fourth quarter, but I needed a quick break. This was a great team effort. The way those guys were knocking down shots, as a point guard, it made my job SO easy. |
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| Morris Peterson
“We wanted to come out aggressive. Phoenix is a very dangerous team. We got off to a good start and collectively we came out aggressive. It shows the versatility of this team. Teams have to play honest against us because we have so many guys that can do different things. We can do so many different things, I think that makes us a lot more dangerous.” |
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McKnight Performs
