Postgame Quotes: Suns vs. Kings, Feb. 2, 2009
 
Terry Porter | 
Shaquille O'Neal | 
Grant Hill | 
Kenny Natt | 
Jason Thompson | 
John Salmons |
Click on a player to read quotes
| Suns Head Coach Terry Porter
“It was obviously a good game for us in a lot of ways, great energy to start and the starters did a great job coming out tonight really giving us that energy. I thought at both ends of the floor, we just had a ton of energy and at the defensive end at times, we didn’t do everything right, but because of activity and the way we talked and we really just scrambled; it kind of helped. Offensively we did a good job of pushing when we got pushed and J-Rich was able to get aggressive tonight, and got to the basket a couple of times and got us a couple of transition buckets. I really just thought we got off to a great start. In the first half, we really did a lot of good things. It was obviously good to get a win and set a tone for our next two games.”
(On how important a win like this was)
“I think it was definitely needed, I talked earlier about just for our confidence we needed a game like this. We can start believing again that we are a good team. I think when you lose in this league, there are always doubts. We just have been kind of hitting bumps in the road. We needed to win to kind of get us going.”
(On giving bench players extended minutes)
“It’s always nice to give those guys minutes, who work hard everyday in practice, push the starters, and don’t get a chance to play. For those guys to get extended minutes, it was nice to see those guys on the floor. J is just solid, he does a lot of good things. He’s not flashy, but he’s always in the right spot defensively and he’s always going to make the right play offensively, and he just a solid player. So, it was good to see those guys get on the floor and play, and finish the game off like they did.”
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| Suns Center Shaquille O'Neal
“It was a good game, but it could also be fool’s gold. I said that a couple of weeks ago – that if we could bottle this up – then we have a chance. It was a good game, but this is a team you’re supposed to do it to, so it’s good that we got the win, but now we’ve got to bottle it up and continue to play like that. If we play just like that, we have a chance – but if we play like we played the other day, we don’t have a chance. You can’t keep going back and forth – you have to bottle this one up and go forward.” |
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| Suns Forward Grant Hill
“We did what we were supposed to do it. It was good – we came out had a lot of energy and played with a lot of enthusiasm. We got out and ran, played good defense and Sacramento has been struggling – so like I said, we did what we were supposed to do. The way we had been playing, it was good to get a win and get a win the way we did.”
(On what the offense did different)
“I think we got out and ran a little more. When those opportunities weren’t there, we went inside – so we really had a good mix. Coach talked about yesterday getting out and running more. I’ll tell you, I was tired out there – we haven’t played at that pace in awhile, but it certainly is fun and I think we can do that. We have guys who can excel in that kind of style and also having a big horse inside when those opportunities aren’t there. It was a good step. We just have to continue to work at it and work hard and not think that we’ve arrived, but hopefully get some confidence from this and some belief and go out there and hopefully get another win in a couple of days.”
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| Kings Head Coach Kenny Natt
“Needless to say that was a very embarrassing performance by us. Give credit to those guys, their team meeting sparked them enough to come out and show more effort. They came out and jumped on us right away, and we were never really in the ball game.
"When you’re as lax as we were coming out tonight, the game meant a lot more to them than it did to us. We were back on our heels and they were hungry, and when you’re hungry you’ll get 21 offensive rebounds, you’ll get 59 total rebounds. Their effort was a lot better than ours. We’re a lot better than we showed tonight and we’ll play a lot better in the future. We just took off tonight and didn’t show up.”
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| Kings Guard Jason Thompson
“They haven’t been playing well and they got together and said they weren’t going to let us control the game. From the first minute of the game, they took control. We couldn’t get back into it.
"I don’t think anything good comes out of a game like this. You’ve got to watch film. You can’t let something like this happen again. We just have to go back to the drawing board and stop having games like this and find a way to get a winning streak going.”
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| Kings Forward John Salmons
“They came out aggressive early. I think what hurt us was our transition defense and our rebounding. We did a poor job getting back when we were missing shots and they were throwing the ball down and getting easy layups and it snowballed from there.
"You always have to try and learn and grow from your mistakes. It’s all you can try to do, learn from it and move on from there.”
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