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NBA WESTERN CONFERENCE FINALS: NUGGETS v LAKERS

May 23, 2009

George Karl

DENVER, COLORADO: Game Three

Los Angeles Â– 103
Denver - 97

THE MODERATOR: Questions.

Q. George, you gave away three points on sort of an emotionally charged technical foul. Was that frustrating? Did you feel like you had to talk to the guys about composure a little bit?
COACH KARL: Yeah, I think emotionally it was a game that we weren't playing very well offensively. It seems like our offense frustrates us more than our defense.
I thought in Game 2, the first half it was our offense. And tonight, offensively we just didn't play with enough teamness. But still had a hell of a -- controlled a lot of the game. But I think most of the films will show that offensively we just didn't play a playoff-type style game.
We're valuing every shot, valuing every possession, valuing every opportunity. Third quarter, we had some opportunities to spur them, and I think we -- way too many 3-pointers, way too many 3-balls and then the free-throw line, 28 to 11 in the second half.
Some of that was fouling at the end of the game. But we usually win the free-throw line against a lot of teams, most teams. And even though we got 31 free throws, I think we just threw away way too many opportunities.
And when you attack, attack, attack, there's a tendency to get more -- you get a better feel for the whistle. I thought when we went back to attacking in the fourth quarter we didn't have a good feel for the whistle.
And I thought Melo got fouled, I thought Chris Andersen got fouled on the dunk. It seemed like the referee wasn't -- we weren't getting good consistency with the whistle.

Q. On the inbound pass, is that something you worked on, or what was the difficulty in getting a guy opened for that?
COACH KARL: Well, I think Lamar Odom -- probably gotta give him a lot of credit. He zipped Melo out. Melo and actually Chauncey were both open. But the pass -- the pressure on the passer created, I think, the mistakes.

Q. You guys lost Game 1 in a tough fashion, came back and won Game 2. Does that give you more confidence now heading into Game 4 with another tough loss in Game 3? Do you trust your team to now come back?
COACH KARL: You know, playoff series have different personalities, and this one now says we've got to win two in LA and also take care of home court on Monday and hopefully Game 6.
It's a good challenge for us. It's a good challenge for us. I mean, I'm sure there's a lot of things we'll learn from this game in a positive way. The foul trouble, so many guys in foul trouble didn't give us a rhythm of rotating different guys on Kobe that I thought we had in Game 2.
And then just the offensive efficiency on a lot of easy basketball plays, a lot of opportunities. We had good opportunities and still failed. And I think that creates, again -- I think I've said this for the last two months this season, our team seems to frustrate itself when we don't play good offense and then it creates a bad attitude at the defensive end on the court even though I don't think we had a bad defensive effort. I thought we had a pretty good defensive effort.

Q. How much of Carmelo's struggles tonight do you attribute to him having to play with foul trouble or how much of it was due to anything that the Lakers were doing to take him out?
COACH KARL: I think the foul trouble had a rhythm, had an impact on the rhythm of how we played. But I don't think that was why. I actually thought our second unit spurred us in a pretty good place when we were in foul trouble.
But we just didn't never get an offensive leader, didn't have an offensive leader in the game, and so we were kind of always trying to pull teeth. And then when we threw away the easy opportunities in transition, easy opportunities by taking, I think, really way too many 3-balls.

Q. Back to the inbound pass, how much does it add to the frustration that this has happened now twice in three games? And also you've talked before about having good inbounders in your career. How much of an underrated skill is that, having that inbound guy?
COACH KARL: It's a tremendous skill. It's a tremendous skill. And we've been good there most of the year. And, again, you could have inbounded the play and missed a shot in both situations. You're talking about we were trying to get a quick shot in that situation. Again, similar to Game 1, we wanted to get the ball in and spaced, ready to go, and letting Melo get a shot quickly.
And probably should have called another timeout.

Q. George, back to I think Chris's question, anything specific that the Lakers did to frustrate Melo tonight, in your mind?
COACH KARL: Other than physically beat him up better than they did in the first two games. I think probably that's what I would say, they were more aware of him, more two people in front of him, more body contact with him. He got 14 free throws. So probably shot the ball 20 times in the 37 minutes.
But, again, the offensive rhythm of the game, especially in the second half, we didn't have a leader. We didn't have -- Chauncey was hot in Game 2. We've had Melo as being our horse for about seven straight games now and tonight he had it going in the first quarter but never really regrouped it.
THE MODERATOR: Thank you, Coach.

End of FastScripts

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