|
|||
|
|||
|
 |
|
|
NBA WESTERN CONFERENCE FINALS: NUGGETS v LAKERSMay 26, 2009Pau GasolLOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA: Practice Day Q. Are you guys in an angry mood? How would you describe the mood of the guys today? PAU GASOL: Well, obviously we're not very happy about the game last night. But we're just thinking about tomorrow and what it's going to take to win the ball game and get ahead in the series. Q. What about you personally? You were pretty outspoken about thinking the ball needs to get inside a little bit more. What do you guys need to be effective? PAU GASOL: I want to go with what's effective, what works out there and what's been working for us and what's a strength of ours. So I think we should exploit that a little more. Q. What's the fatigue level on this club right now because Kobe's been playing for almost three straight years. You're kind of -- you're exhausted yourself. Andrew is hurt. Lamar is banged up as well? PAU GASOL: It's all about mind strength right now. Forget about the fatigue and the body. You've got to be strong enough mentally to be able to fight through everything and know what you're playing for. We're two wins away from being in the finals again. And we have home court advantage. So we should take advantage of it. Q. And last night, though, Denver beat you at some things that normally is your strength like off the bench and they outrebounded you as well? PAU GASOL: Yes, the bench didn't do so well last night. And they definitely were active in pursuing the ball a lot harder than we were. And they had desperation mode on. We didn't quite have it last night. So hopefully tomorrow it will be a totally different story. Q. Will you ask for, maybe even demand the ball more? PAU GASOL: I'm going to try. But there's only so much I can do as far as demanding. Rather talk the our coaches and our guys and hopefully we see what's effective and what works and we go to it. Q. Has Denver crossed the line to the point of almost embarrassing? PAU GASOL: They get away with a few things, and at home they get away with more stuff. I think the league is pretty aware of it at this point in time. And they should be able to cut it off. Hopefully they will. Q. Because of that have they gotten under your skin a little bit? PAU GASOL: A little bit. Only when obviously nobody got hurt, but they could have. And that's something that the referees should be able to protect us from, because we're not trying to hurt anybody, we're just trying to play hard and compete. But there's some plays out there that reflect some dirtness and are not acceptable. Q. Does it get under your skin when J.R. Smith celebrates the way he did basket after basket? PAU GASOL: He got 24 points off the bench. He was a factor for their team. He got going. I don't think he had a good game in this series yet but last night. So we've got to keep him under control, obviously. He outshot our whole bench, so that tells you something. But, no, he was just excited about helping his team to win and hopefully we'll show that excitement tomorrow. I hope that some of our guys will do that tomorrow and show that kind of passion about helping your team to win. Q. Has there been a lack of that? PAU GASOL: Obviously we haven't seen much on these games. We played I think better on Game 3 than we did in Game 4, we did enough to win the ball game. We worked really hard. We competed. Game 4, we haven't seen a lot of passion yet. Q. Can you talk about just how much better the bench has to play against this Denver team? PAU GASOL: Well, the bench is a big factor always. So it will play in your favor. It will play against you. So far it hasn't played in our favor much. So we were expecting our bench to do the job, step up, play with confidence, play together and compete. Q. (Indiscernible). PAU GASOL: A couple times. That definitely should be a point of emphasis. Q. (Indiscernible). PAU GASOL: I try. I tried. But in this offense, also the post, first the passer and you have to see the cards, there's a lot of action in your lane. And let the guy go to work. So sometimes you can go quick, and I try to go quick because I think I'm effective at that. And sometimes I have to. End of FastScripts |
|
||||||||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
About ASAP Sports •
FastScripts Archive •
Recent Interviews •
Captioning •
Upcoming Events •
Contact Us
FastScripts | Events Covered | Our Clients | Other Services | ASAP in the News | Site Map | Job Opportunities | Links |
|
ASAP Sports, Inc. | T: 1.212 385 0297
|