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| Tuesday, December 1, 2009 Final Score: Los Angeles 110, New Orleans 99 Hornets Post Game Quotes
On the size of the Lakers: “Their size and the quality of their size and the depth of their size is a problem for every team. It was a problem for us. Their deep post ups were hard to handle. They were big factors in the free throw differential, which was a huge thing to overcome. I thought we battled in the third and fourth quarter and competed to close it up and give ourselves a chance. We just had dug ourselves such a deep hole in the second quarter that it was very, very difficult.” On what his team could have done better: “Without a question, we could have executed our defensive gameplan much better to have made it a little bit more difficult for them. Prior to getting the ball into the deep post we had wanted to be more aggressive on their ball reversals and make it a little bit harder for them to get the ball movement happen inside. I think we need to do a much better job of that in future games.” On his team’s effort in the fourth quarter: “We’re proud of that effort. That’s the kind of effort we’re looking for; the kind of effort that can allow you to be successful. We need the execution to match the effort. Tonight the effort was there, the execution was a little bit behind. We’ll keep fighting.” On the performance of Darren Collison: “Darren’s played a lot of big games in this building; played real well for us tonight, obviously, as the point guard. He has his hands full right now in that role. He’s doing an outstanding job for us, getting out team in position and competing on a nightly basis.”
On tonight’s game: “The second quarter we just got beat. No continuation on what we did in the first quarter as far as setting the tone. That’s what the Lakers do, they stick to what they do. They share the ball.” On getting rhythm on the court: “I think in these last couple of games, we just don’t have a clear definition in terms of what guys are supposed to do. There are too many guys trying to score the basketball and that’s us being sporadic in terms of how we can’t decide where we’re going to go with the basketball.”
On tonight’s game: “It gets a little frustrating. We didn’t play well. It just wasn’t a good representation of how we wanted to play.” On what went wrong in tonight’s game: “On a night like this, it’s a whole bunch of things. You can’t really pinpoint one thing.”
On the Lakers' strengths: “Well obviously the Lakers’ length. They got some bigs. They spread their arms out and it covers up a large margin of space. Whenever you have the space, you’re going to go on from there. And they had that space. It made it tough for us when we were passing the ball. You’ve got to pick your plays because if you drive, you may land into the bottom of Pau Gasol. You have to be careful with how you initiate the offense.” On his thoughts of the 2nd quarter: “It was tough. I thought we made a lot of errors. We came out aggressively in the first quarter and in the second quarter, we just made a lot of mistakes, especially on the defensive end. You have to be careful on how you make mistakes against them. You can’t beat them just on offense.” Lakers Post Game Quotes
On tonight’s game: “We played three quarters of pretty good basketball. I was a little bit concerned about our defense versus the screen roll but we measured it up in the second quarter, played pretty well, extended the lead and kind of had a cushion to play with during the rest of the night.” On the balanced scoring tonight: “I thought Kobe generated a lot of what was done regardless of Fish’, also with the assists, and the way they moved the ball and played. Everybody got into it in various manner; Ron with some three’s, ‘Drew inside, you know, a beneficiary of a lot of good passes from guys too. But I like the aggressiveness; I liked the offense, in the first half particularly.” On defending the Hornets: “We tried to make two or three adjustments during the course of the night as far as how we played. We had a little control of it in the second period; they broke out again in the third, I thought, at times, although more of that was, I thought, defensively wandering, a little too much help.” On being able to rest the starters for an extended time: “That’s a really big part of it. We have a really good eight-man rotation that’s going right now; we have to figure out how to get a nine-man rotation in there, but it’s working well at this level. Usually I’d like to get at least nine guys in the rotation to keep everybody hungry and active to play good basketball. If you can play guys under 30-minutes in the course of an NBA season that’s all gravy for you as a team.” On measuring the Lakers as of this point in the season: “I think we’re playing pretty good basketball but you really can’t measure it, I think it’s really hard to measure it. I think we’ll get, really, a measure of this team, where we’re at this point in the season, with Miami and Phoenix on Friday and Sunday.” On if he was happy with the win or disappointed with the close: “I try to measure it off both territories: good win, could be better.”
On the team tonight: “It’s good, things are going well. We are all working hard and we are looking pretty good out there. We are looking forward to continuing to get better, focus on every single game and continue to win.” On playing a team you are expected to beat: “Sometimes, sometimes it allows you to maybe relax a little too much and you do not come out with the aggressiveness that is necessary to win an NBA game. You have to make sure that your focus is where it needs to be and make sure you come out and play and work hard.” On the Hornets playing without Chris Paul: “They are very different obviously. Chris is a guy that makes a big difference. He is probably one of the best point guards in the league and he creates so much for himself and for the others and just makes the game easier for everybody else.”
On his efficiency tonight: “[I had] a good warm-up before the game and I was able to get the ball pretty low. As soon as I got it, they’re a little bit shorter so it made it easier to score over the top.” On the team getting him the ball tonight: “They were looking and I just had my hands up and was just being big.” On the win tonight despite losing the big lead: “We did close. But especially that second unit, they really got to set and run the triangle more and get organized. That’s the big issue.” On Coach Jackson’s decision to leave that particular line-up to finish the game: “I think he needs to start doing that some more because they have to get out of that. We need to rely on them when we start playing some better teams and the games get close down to the wire.”
On Coach Jackson’s decision to leave that particular line-up to finish the game: “We have to do a better job at closing those games. Use each other to each others’ strength. Sharing the basketball and moving it within the triangle. Know how to use each other.” On the 7-game winning streak: “It’s good. We just want to keep it going. Keep the momentum going. Keep getting better and better and better.” |
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