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NBA EASTERN CONFERENCE FINALS: MAGIC v CAVALIERSMay 20, 2009LeBron JamesMo WilliamsCLEVELAND, OHIO: Game One Magic – 107 Q. Is this one you feel -- you talked before the game about Denver let one get away, did you guys let one get away in Game 1? LeBRON JAMES: This is -- we had a good chance to win Game 1, but it was great plays made by both teams down the stretch. Two good teams continuing to execute down the stretch. It definitely hurt, but we got to adjust. Like we said before, a series is not won or lost in one game. It is a good start for them. We just have to make adjustments and get ready for Game 2. Q. LeBron, you limped throughout the game. You limped at the end of the game. Do you have any concern you won't be 100 percent for game 2? Why or why not? LeBRON JAMES: I'm not injured. Just caught a few cramps. That comes from maybe a little bit of dehydration. So I got to make sure I keep my fluids up for the next few days. I'm not hurt. Q. Not an ankle? LeBRON JAMES: Not an ankle, not a knee. I'm fine now. Just sometimes if you ever -- if you ever played sports before and you catch a cramp, your body will tell you when you are ready to move. If you try to move before your body tells you to move, it is going to hurt. I just got to stay a little more hydrated throughout these next few days. Q. What changed from the first half where you guys were dominating to the second half where it got away from you guys? MO WILLIAMS: They did a great job of finding what worked. They made some adjustments. They adjusted what they was doing. I think we caught them off guard on the blitz on Turkoglu. In the second half, they did a better job with that. And they made some shots. Made some big shots, made some big buckets. I think that was the difference in the second half. LeBRON JAMES: Mo knocked it right on the head. Some of the same shots they had missing in the first half they made in the second half. With Dwight's numbers, Dwight played great, of course. But we felt like Rashard was that X-factor tonight. He made some big shots for them at the start of the fourth. Every big shot they needed, they were down one, up one, he made shots, man. He had a heck of a game to help them win tonight. Q. 49 points, 8 assists, 6 rebounds, 60 percent from the floor. What else can you do to help the team to win? It looks like you had one of the best games in the playoffs. LeBRON JAMES: Well, my statistics don't mean anything when it ends in a loss. If I can do something else to help our team win, I'm going to do that. What I did is try to give us an opportunity to win. I tried to put us in the right position to win. That's all I can do as an individual. But you try to -- you got to find a way to will games away sometimes when they get away or continue with the same energy you had throughout the whole game. Tonight my individual performance means nothing, you know, because we didn't win the game. Q. Can you talk about the matchup problems that Turkoglu presents for you guys out on the perimeter, especially with his play-making. LeBRON JAMES: Him being 6'10", he can see over a lot of defense. He can still see over some of the guards or see over me sometimes when we are blitzing his pick-and-roll. He had to really -- he had a really all-around solid game. He adjusts in the second half, found some things that helped them win the game. Q. LeBron, you said, hey, it is a long series and we'll adjust. Take us through that mental process over the next couple days. How do you guys get yourselves in that place for Game 2? LeBRON JAMES: We will prepare just like we do after a win. You make an adjustment. You try to play a little bit harder on the defensive end. For a team shooting 55 percent on our court in a game is unacceptable for all of us. We know that. That's not how we play basketball and that's not how we are going to win. We should have lost giving a team 55 percent from the field. So we are going to make adjustments tomorrow. We are going to watch some film. We are not going to add no more pressure on us than we need to be. Just go out there and play. Q. Anything else besides defense that's sticking with you and you want to change for Game 2? LeBRON JAMES: I mean, offensively we were stagnant at times, maybe because I felt the hot hand. I got back to the one-on-one play that I had in the past. But I felt I had it going individually. But we only had five turnovers as a team. It is not like we were not playing basketball the right way. We missed some really good shots, some easy shots, we made shots. We shot 48 percent from the field offensively, so for the most part that's a pretty good game when you have 19 assists and only 5 turnovers. MO WILLIAMS: I want to add to that last one. I don't think that him going one-on-one was the factor. I think he had it going. That's part of our offense, for him to attack his man. I think the key -- the key -- the biggest key to the game was myself. Myself was the key. I have to take pressure off that guy. I'm looking at the stats and I'm looking at Dwight and I'm looking at Rashard and I'm looking at Hedo, and those three guys was terrific tonight. And I look at myself, 6-19, LeBron is 20-30 from the field. I don't care, he can go one-on-one all he wants. I got 19 shots still. It wasn't him. Q. Mo, considering what happened at the end of the first half, did you think that last heave was going in? MO WILLIAMS: Yeah (smiling). And I'm honest. That's the truth. LeBRON JAMES: He missed two wide-open ones right before that, too. MO WILLIAMS: It happens like that when you are having a tough night shooting the ball. You know, you some kind of way make shots like that. I don't know. LeBRON JAMES: Yeah. I thought the last one was going to go in (smiling). MO WILLIAMS: I should have made the last one since I was missing all the other wide-open ones. LeBRON JAMES: All the easy ones. Q. LeBron, could you foresee some change-up in the rotation maybe to get Sasha in for some of the defensive matchups in the next game? And also can you speak to the very last play, to the tip ball, did you guys just draw that up right in the moment? You didn't have a time-out there. LeBRON JAMES: I think Sasha can be really good for us. Mentally if he is in tune with the game plan, he can give us some big minutes. His athleticism, his length, being 6'6", 6'7", he can help us. But the last play, Mo wanted the last shot, you know. He told me to tip it to him, he was going to take the last shot. We went with it. Almost went in. Q. LeBron, you guys haven't really faced much adversity in this post-season, you do know. Can a little bit of that be good, though? LeBRON JAMES: I think it is always good. Nobody said it was going to be easy. It's one game, and if we just look at it and just one game and we just move on to the next game, then we'll be fine. If we think the world is coming down on our heads, then, you know, we are going to get beat pretty bad in Game 2. So like I said before, we always have been a one game or, you know, one team. That's our attitude. So win, lose or draw, you move on to the next. Q. LeBron, do you think the cramps, do you think it may have had anything to do with the long layoff? LeBRON JAMES: It may have. Because I caught some cramps, too, before in Game 1 of the Atlanta series with the layoff that we had. You can never simulate practice or scrimmaging during practice because you can't add 20,000 fans, you can't add the lights, you can't add that type of atmosphere. With all the sweating that goes on during the course of the game, the mental and physical pounding that you take throughout the course of a game, it is easy for you to catch cramps. So it has something to do with it. Q. Stan said at halftime we are all witnesses to his players. Do you have any reaction to that? LeBRON JAMES: That's called reverse psychology. Just trying to get his guys basically saying you guys need to play a little harder and don't worry about his name, just -- you guys are in the NBA for a reason. I got to just continue with what I got to do to help us win ball games. You guys hear Stan all the time in time-outs, you know how he is. He's funny (smiling). Q. Rashard hits the big 3 to put them up. You guys call time-out. Take us through what you talked about in the huddle, what the design was and Delonte is open for the 3. LeBRON JAMES: Rashard hit a big shot. Couldn't believe he took the shot, but that's him. If you look at any other series, if you look at statistics and you guard the stat sheets and know percentages and things like that and guy's tendencies, Orlando, they like to go for the win on the road. Hedo took a 3 in the Philly series with a tie game. And Rashard, you just need a little bit of air space to knock down a 3. The play was drawn up to me to make a play, to go quickly, to give us a chance to get an offensive rebound, and I was able to drive. And my man failed, so it kind of got me off balance. So I drove and seen Mo, I saw one guy guard Mo and Delonte. Just like any other play, any other time, I see that happen, I made the skip to Mo. I know Mo wanted to shoot it bad, but his basketball instinct say if a man comes to you, swing, swing. Delonte, same spot to put us up one, had a good look at it, just didn't fall. Q. Did you have to call a couple of time-outs because you were cramping up during the game? LeBRON JAMES: Yep, yep. End of FastScripts |
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