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NBA WESTERN CONFERENCE FINALS: NUGGETS v LAKERSMay 25, 2009Kobe BryantDENVER, COLORADO: Game Four Denver – 120 Q. Did you get tripped? KOBE BRYANT: No, I just fell on my face for no reason. I'm a klutz. Q. Dahntay Jones playing you dirty? KOBE BRYANT: Good defense. Q. The first quarter Phil Jackson asked you to come back into the game, did you yourself demand to get back in the game? KOBE BRYANT: He asked me to go back in. Q. How were you feeling physically tonight, and does it get physically/mentally exhausting when you are coming in down 10 with six minutes to go and you've got to kind of make that all up on your own, it seems like? KOBE BRYANT: Yeah, it's more tiring to do that. But physically I felt okay today. I felt fine. There are certain stretches where I was a little winded a little bit but all in all I felt pretty damn good. Q. You were so drastically different home road on the first games of the Houston series. Do you think that could become the case in this series? KOBE BRYANT: No, I don't think so. The score doesn't indicate how competitive the game was. We got within 2, 3, then they busted us open, down 8, 9. It was kind of a see saw back and forth until late in the game they made a couple of 3s, busted the game open. Outside of that it was pretty competitive. Q. The rebound disparity on paper was pretty large. How bad was it on the court? KOBE BRYANT: It was bad. They kept getting second chance opportunities and making us pay for them. Birdman came in gave his team a huge lift. J.R. Smith obviously was the thing everybody is going to be talking about, 24 points coming off the bench. Rightfully so. But Chris came in, did a fantastic job. He had 14 rebounds off the bench. And to go along with Kenyon's 15 and Nene and, I mean, they did a great job on the boards. Q. Do you have a bit of a sense of relief, getting ready to go back home knowing that you have home court advantage and what you're able to do at home against anybody, usually? KOBE BRYANT: I wouldn't say relief. We did our job in terms of coming in here getting one of these games. We would have loved to get both of them. It just didn't happen for us. Now it's time to go home and see if we can't take care of business at Staples. Q. As a team, how tired are you guys? Is this something maybe younger guys have to work through? Is there fatigue because the Houston series went so long? Do you think there's a fatigue factor going on? KOBE BRYANT: Probably. Probably. But you just gotta push through it. I think with a young team, when you have a 2-1 series lead, it's kind of the attitude where you don't -- every play is not as important. You know what I mean? When you're tired you say, Okay, I don't have to get that ball or I don't have to get on the floor for this loose ball, as opposed to taking every possession like it's the last possession like we did in the third game. Q. So from the outside looking in some have said that you guys act like a team that thinks you can turn it on and turn it off. Do you guys have that sense? KOBE BRYANT: No, no, they just kicked our ass. It's not like we can turn it on, turn it off. They whooped us, period. They whooped us on the glass. They whooped us to loose balls. There's no switch. There was no switch. We played hard. They played harder and better, period. Q. You dread coming back here? KOBE BRYANT: No, first and foremost, you gotta take care of business at home. And then come back here, have a little fun. THE MODERATOR: Thank you. End of FastScripts |
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