SONICS COACH NATE MCMILLAN:

On Vladimir Radmanovic's performance:
He had a great game. He’s still feeling under the weather, and the last couple of games he’s just been unbelievable coming off the bench. His stroke is there. He’s making good decisions with the ball. One thing we’ve been talking about is our shot selection. He’s been taking good shots. He’s one guy that we thought we needed to be consistent. With Rashard Lewis and Ray Allen you know what they’re going to give you. That’s one of the things I told Radmanovic this season he had to do for us. He’s had a solid season.

On telling players to attack the paint:
We want to attack the basket. I think a lot of times people think we’re a three-point shooting team. If we can get to the basket, that’s what we want to do. But if we force that defense to collapse and stop the ball, then we’ll take the shot that’s available. We have guys who can stretch the defense behind the three-point line and knock down that shot. Those guys have been doing it.

On limiting the Lakers shots:
We got off to a slow start. That first quarter was pretty slow. But we slowly started playing defense and getting stops. I thought the zone was pretty good the second half. I thought Reggie Evans did an unbelievable job of defending and rebounding. We had ball movement. When we’re sharing the ball like that, it’s tough for teams to beat us.

FORWARD VLADIMIR RADMANOVIC:

On his hot shooting:
The rim tonight looked a little bit bigger tonight. Those guys didn’t pay enough attention and we punished them.

On trying to tie the Sonics record of nine threes in a game:
The guys kept screaming at me to shoot it, shoot it. … They didn’t cover us, they gave us a lot of open shots and we knocked them down.

GUARD LUKE RIDNOUR:

On the Sonics strong finish to the first half:
That was big for us. Coach is always preaching to win the last couple of minutes of every quarter. They were scoring on us at will and then finally we started getting stops and carried that momentum into the second half.

GUARD RAY ALLEN:

On the game:
If you have a good record most people think you can walk on the floor and beat somebody the minute you walk on the floor, but you don’t and it takes a while. Starting the game they gave us a pretty good punch. All we could do is sustain it and absorb the impact and try and get that same punch right back. Eventually we do what we are capable of doing and don’t panic and if we are the better team, it’s going to turn around.

On the Sonics:
We have a lot of different weapons. We have a very deep roster and that makes us very dangerous.

L.A. LAKERS COACH RUDY TOMJANOVICH:

On the game:
I think the story of the game was rebounding. That’s one of our strengths – we’re either at the top of the league or close to the top – and you’re just not going to beat a good team giving up that many second chance points.

On the last 30 seconds of the first half:
The last 30 seconds were costly. We drill on getting a good last two minutes of the quarter, but in the last 30 seconds we had a loose ball foul in a bonus situation, a turnover or maybe even two, and that changed the whole game … we went from a lead to about a nine-point deficit.

On Luke Walton's career-high 19 points:
It’s tough the way things turned out for Luke early in the year with injuries and different guys stepping in the exhibition season, and he’s played in and out. Today with the match-ups and the way we started, I was really happy to give him the chance to play, and I think he responded in a big way – his shooting, his passing, his toughness – and I hope to see more of that.

FORWARD LAMAR ODOM:

On the Sonics offensive rebounding:
We would have been right in the game if in the third quarter we would have secured some of the offensive rebounds. I think Evans got about four or five of them. I don’t know if I did not do a good job of putting a body on him or locating him or what, but I feel like I lost this game.

On the difference in the game:
It was a 57-51 game, we were down six at the half and I think the end of that second quarter killed us because we were up and then we gave them the lead and they had so much momentum going into the half and then they came out, we got them to take threes but when them missed they got the offensive rebounds. I think early in the third quarter is where we let the game slip away.

On Radmanovic's shooting:
He had a great game. With Radmanovic having a good shooting night but Lewis having a bad shooting night sort of off-set them … even though he [Lewis] had 21 points, he took 20 shots, so he had a bad shooting night and I thought that gave us an opportunity to win the game but we just did not rebound the ball tonight.

FORWARD LUKE WALTON:

On his career night:
I got a lot of good looks and the shot was going good. I have fresh legs from not getting a lot of minutes this year and I was ready to go, but we lost so it is kind of one of those things where it does not matter when you lose … They just killed us on the glass. They have so many scorers and shooters, got offensive rebounds and easy put backs and kick-outs for easy three pointers and we can’t let that happen.

On his improved shooting:
My shot feels a ton better. I have been working out with my guy every day and work with the coaches. I just feel like it feels better and tonight I got a chance to shot the improvement on my shot, but I don’t think that it was, just tonight that I turned the corner.

FORWARD CARON BUTLER:

On the Sonics:
We were protecting the paint, ran back but those guys were just knocking down shots and when they weren’t knocking down shots, they did a good job of getting offensive rebounds. They were just unbelievable, and the 20 offensive rebounds they got they converted on them so it was a tough night for us, but the beautiful thing is we get a chance to bounce back and play the Clippers, another good team. We will have to bring it.

2004-05 Postgame Quotes/Notes Archive