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NBA FINALS: LAKERS v CELTICS

June 5, 2008

Phil Jackson

BOSTON, MASSACHUSETTS: Game One

COACH PHIL JACKSON: It was a tale of two halves tonight. We had some control in the first half, played the kind of game we wanted to play, and the second half we came out and immediately wiped out the lead we had established in about 20 seconds, a matter of two possessions. So it was quite a flurry that they came out and played that third quarter with, put us back on our heels.
They finished the game strong and they rebounded the ball better than we did tonight, and we'll have to do a better job there.

Q. Obviously they packed their defense back in but did you hope to get more inside than you did?
COACH PHIL JACKSON: You know, what did we have, 14 assists the first half, and seven in the second. That was the difference. We did a lot of things off the dribble we didn't do in the first half, moving the ball better and taking some shots. I don't know about the interior stuff. That's all part of what goes on. Our guys had good looks, a lot of in-and-out shots for us tonight.

Q. How would you assess Kobe's play, 9 for 26, four turnovers? Was he forcing shots there?
COACH PHIL JACKSON: I think he thought he was shooting the ball pretty well, they just didn't stay in. A lot of them rattled out. I said to him, check it out, he had some guys open in other parts of the offense, but he said he had some good looks. You live on that. That's going to happen.

Q. There's been a lot of talk about your guys' offense against their defense. What was your thoughts about their defense into the series and what you saw tonight?
COACH PHIL JACKSON: Well, they contest the ball a lot. We handled that well. Turnovers, a big part of our game is not to turn the basketball over. I thought we didn't get after the ball on the boards and opportunities that were there for us. They did a much better job on the boards. That's the difference in the ballgame.

Q. In the third quarter when you were up by five and Pierce goes out and 36 seconds later Perkins goes out, did you think that that might be a tipping point for the team in terms of --
COACH PHIL JACKSON: You know, you don't know what happens. Guys can break a shoelace and go out, the pants break down, drawstring falls apart. You don't know what happens to guys. Pierce was back on the floor in three minutes, so he wasn't that long out of the game. He came back and hit two threes. I think that was a big momentum change in the game.

Q. Late in the game what was going on with Lamar Odom? You had him in and out of the game. He was not quite into it right there.
COACH PHIL JACKSON: Well, they were giving so much help off of Lamar that I thought we needed an outside shooter out there to give us some spacing on the floor. They gave a lot of help on Lamar. I thought he had a little bit of trouble there in the second half, struggled a little bit in foul situations, situations like that.

Q. Pierce obviously hit those two threes, but before that, just him coming onto the court, obviously that got the fans back into the game a lot, but is it your experience or your impression that that kind of move, just him coming back into the game, has an emotional effect? On the game itself?
COACH PHIL JACKSON: I mean, I don't understand that. You have the fans cheer, but --

Q. But for the Celtics to see him come back, do you think maybe that's something that's overstated?
COACH PHIL JACKSON: That's overstated. What helped them out were those two threes that he hit, not coming back on the floor. There was a little momentum change before he even came onto the floor right there. I called a time-out just to settle our guys down. They didn't make good plays at that little span of the game. I thought hitting the threes were what was important.

End of FastScripts

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