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NBA WESTERN CONFERENCE FINALS: NUGGETS v LAKERS

May 27, 2009

George Karl

LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA: Game Five

Los Angeles Â– 103
Denver - 94

THE MODERATOR: Questions.

Q. How would you assess your team's performance tonight? Seeing how you had a great performance in Denver, now you're in LA, what was the difference? Was it the intensity of the home crowd versus the LA crowd?
COACH KARL: (Chuckling) there's a home court edge and intensity to the game. I thought they got the benefit of the whistle. But it just seems like very frustrating for me to sit here and have to worry about every -- like it's the gamesmanship in the press conference on refereeing.
I just wish it wasn't -- that's not a part for coaching for me. I mean, Melo got beat up tonight. And the same type of attitude and actions that we had that got us to the rim and got us a lot of easy baskets. Tonight they defended better, at least from the standpoint of the scoreboard.
The stat sheet says they defended it better. They blocked more shots. We didn't get as many paint points. But I'm not sure that's the case. And I think there's some good things that my team did; that for the first three quarters it was a pretty evenly matched game. And I think it will be very easy to get my team ready to play for Game 6.

Q. You mentioned the officiating. Carmelo did get to the line a bit more even than Kobe did. But some of the calls -- is it the call's late? It's not displayed, the numbers on the stat sheet, it was just end-of-game calls or did the team just lose the focus for a moment?
COACH KARL: I'm not going to get fined. I'm not going to get into the game of -- Phil is so much better at it than I am, so much more philosophical about the whistle and how it changed.
It was a very difficult whistle to play, play in the game. No question about that. Every player in my locker room is frustrated, from guards to big guys. Look at the stat sheet: Gasol goes after at least 20 jump shots, 20 shots to the rim and gets one foul; our big guys have 16. I don't know. Nene has six fouls, three or four of them don't exist.
And it's frustrating where you take one of your best big guys off the court for that many minutes.
But, again, it just seems like, I think Stan Van Gundy says it right: In the post game we're lobbying for the league to help us with the refereeing.
And this is too good of a series. It's too good of teams competing that we're sitting here just confused by the whistle.

Q. Going back home to Denver, how do you think the team is as far as confidence? You've won the last game and had such a great record there. What's the team mentality?
COACH KARL: I think they're excited. I think they were excited tonight. We didn't play well enough probably to win on the road. But we played hard enough and matched intensity of the game from the very beginning.
We probably just didn't get enough things done offensively, and our frustration normally comes when we don't have a good offensive basketball game.

Q. You kept them off their inside game for four games, but tonight they did get to it. Is that a concern for you?
COACH KARL: Probably. I think it will be an emphasis of the film study tomorrow on how they got into the paint more than they've gotten in there recently. I think Odom had a huge game for them. I thought that was the thing they hadn't gotten. He got loose and played very well especially around the basket and he finished a lot of shots and actually missed some easy -- he actually missed some shots that were very close to the basket, too.

Q. In a game that was tied after the first three quarters, it turned at the end of the third, start of the fourth, 21-3 run. What happened in that stretch?
COACH KARL: We didn't score. We were struggling getting points and Nene picked up his fifth foul. We kind of went small. I don't know if that hurt us or not. But they got their high/low game going a little bit more than they have in the first three or four games.
And I think I've said from the very beginning, I think Gasol and Odom were their best play-makers on the court. And I think, as I said, Odom got involved and Gasol got involved scoring around the basket.

Q. What are some optimistic things you've got going heading into this next game?
COACH KARL: I don't think it will be a complicated -- to fix some of the offensive mistakes that we have. We've got to execute screening a little better. Our spacing needs -- the last game our spacing was probably the best it's been all season. Tonight I think because we didn't get in the open court as much, we didn't have those good gaps that we normally have.
But we're close to scoring -- I mean, 94 points is low for us. But we're capable of scoring on their defense and we'll figure it out.

Q. How confident are you that going back to Denver that you can secure Game 6?
COACH KARL: Very confident. I like my team.
THE MODERATOR: Thank you, Coach.

End of FastScripts

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