We need to try to regain some home-court advantage. |
We obviously need his defense at some level. It's good to have him back in the offense, but we weren't smooth with him in there offensively, though. |
We played about as well as we played all season. They had back-to-back games like we did, but you could see their legs getting tired. I had a suspicion that we could win this game tonight, but they played above my expectations. |
We remind our players that this is something that was a special night in a heated situation but it's not going to be a steady diet for us. The onus on Kobe is to stay inside the team offense. The onus on the players is to pick it up a little bit better. |
We slept almost all the way through the third quarter. We're just not able to play a full game. |
We stumbled and fumbled around out there for three quarters, |
We stumbled and fumbled around out there for three quarters. |
We talked about how passive they were in the first quarter. |
We thought this was a winnable game. |
We want him out there. We want their full team out there to play, so you earn what you win. |
We want to get him into that 36-minute mark somewhere going down the stretch here. |
We were flat tonight. We are still not quite good enough to stay with a team like that. |
We were relying on Kobe and Kobe couldn't shoot the ball because of a hand injury. He was just reluctant to shoot. |
We were unhappy with the first 18 minutes of the game, and we weren't reacting defensively the way we like to see them react. In the second half, we stepped it up defensively and were able to get out and run. |
We'd rather have Steve being the guy that's taking the shots and making the points than having a bunch of guys get 20 points or 15 points a game. |