SONICS COACH NATE MCMILLAN:

On the game:
Tonight I thought Danny (Fortson) did what he does best, especially on the boards on both ends of the floor. He did a good job of keeping Tim (Duncan) out of the paint. He was physical and tried to dominate the paint, I thought it was a very good effort coming off the bench. He sets the tone. He’s a presence out on the floor. He does a good job setting screens, he’s a very good rebounder, he runs the floor, and tonight I thought he established himself against a very good front line, and a very big front line. All of our bigs did. Danny came in and did his part, but you also have to look at what Reggie Evans did, Jerome James, (Vladimir) Radmanovic, Nick Collison, they all did a solid job of making their bigs work.

On holding Duncan to 4-for-16 shooting:
You have to give credit to our defense and our bigs. We followed the gameplan. You can’t stop Tim but what you try and do is make him take tough shots, and I thought defensively we came to work. I thought this team tonight outworked San Antonio. Anytime you work, it doesn’t guarantee you a win, but it gives you a great opportunity to win ball games.

On the Sonics offense:
Ray (Allen) is our first option, both he and Rashard (Lewis). San Antonio has good defenders at both the two and three positions. We’re going to go to our guys and we needed everyone’s help. I thought Jerome, Danny, our bigs did a good job of setting screens and getting those guys open. The guards did a good job of delivering the ball. We’re not going away from our bread and butter. We did a good job of getting those guys open.

FORWARD RASHARD LEWIS:

On Fortson’s 13 rebounds:
I think once he started doing it they started paying attention to him and trying to box him out. It kind of left the lane open for guys like me.

On whether his feet are sore:
They’re sore right now. But once that crowd starts screaming, the whistle blows and the ball goes in the air there’s nothing I can cry about. I can’t use my foot as an excuse I just have to go out there and play basketball.

On whether teams are keying on him and Allen:
I think our bigs are helping by setting good screens for us and getting us open, and our point guards are getting us the ball in spots where we like it. We’re playing together as a team, moving the ball around, and other guys are starting to knock down shots and opens things up for me and Ray.

GUARD RAY ALLEN:

On winning the last two games:
We’re still the same team. We’re kind of smacked in our opener in LA. We kind of lost our bearings. You’d think we hadn’t played together as a group. Now I think everyone knows what their input should be to the team.

On the learning process:
I think you can always learn things that you can use in the future. We’ll continue to learn things and a lot of these guys are still seeing situations that they may not have seen before in their careers. There is going to be lots to learn so I think watching film will be very helpful. One thing that can change is the effort they put out there on the floor. If everyone gets to work every night, we’ll fare well every night.

SAN ANTONIO COACH GREGG POPOVICH:

On the game:
Seattle played really fine basketball. They played hard basketball. They outplayed us every way that a team could outplay somebody. I thought Antonio (Daniels) was great running the show out there. He really did a fantastic job out there at that. Fortson was super on the boards but everybody played well. They played harder than we did. They played smarter than we did and they deserved to win the game.

On the Spurs performance:
Matchup problems had nothing to do with tonight. Their effort was better, their execution was better. They wanted the game much more than we did. I thought we played like we assumed we would win the game. It was very disappointing…I thought we played soft. I thought we played with an arrogance and it was a very disappointing loss in that sense.

GUARD TONY PARKER:

On the game:
It was just a bad night. We didn’t bring the energy tonight. We didn’t play well. I give all the credit to Seattle. They played a good game. It was just sloppy today.

On taking the Sonics for granted:
I don’t think so, it’s just the third game of the season, and obviously we didn’t bring the energy tonight. I think it was just one of those bad nights. It happens, it’s going to be fine. We are going to come back strong net game and life goes on. It’s one of those nights where nothing went right but it’s okay.

FORWARD TIM DUNCAN:

On the game :
It was just a bad day. All they did was stay in front of me and I didn’t make shots. We played very badly. We ran into a team who played very well. You put those two things together and we are still down six or seven points down the stretch. I do give a lot of credit to them because they played well but we can play a thousand times better than we did tonight.

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