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NBA WESTERN CONFERENCE FINALS: SUNS v LAKERS

May 27, 2010

Alvin Gentry

LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA: Game Five

Lakers Â– 103
Suns - 101

COACH GENTRY: To me it's a good effort by us, and at least they know we're not going to go away.
THE MODERATOR: Questions.

Q. (Off microphone).
COACH GENTRY: It gets a lot tougher when it's an air ball. Usually air balls go back to the offensive team for some reason, and we didn't do a good job. Bottom line, we didn't box Ron out. We let him walk right in and get the rebound.
That's kind of one of those things where you know you've got to do a better a job with it.

Q. Is that just like a dangerous situation, you're running extra guys at Kobe?
COACH GENTRY: Not really. In that situation right there, he caught it and shot it. We did a great job of challenging the shot. I mean, anytime it's a last second shot, you're going to be frightened as heck with Kobe out on the floor. He's made, I think either six or seven this year in the last possession of the game.
So we just wanted to make sure we forced them to the sideline where he was going to have to be able to shoot a quick shot, and we got him to shoot a tough shot, really, and we just didn't do a very good job of boxing out and coming up with the ball.
But as I said, that's kind of what happened. Those plays like that are the difference between championship teams and really good teams. We just gotta make sure we make that play.

Q. Describe the illness, did it get better or worse?
COACH GENTRY: I ate at a restaurant today that will not be named. But for some reason it didn't sit well with me.

Q. Were you going to leave the sideline?
COACH GENTRY: I wasn't going to leave the sideline. I told someone it's very similar to college. Once you get it out of the system, everything's okay. It's like a Friday night, you know, frat party, okay.

Q. When you guys lose a game like this so close, how do these guys recover from that?
COACH GENTRY: I think for us, you know, our whole deal was we kept talking about trying to get in a position to win the game the last four minutes. We got down 16, I don't know, we were down 18, and we just kept saying we gotta chip away and try to have an opportunity to win the last four minutes of the game.
We put ourselves in that position. Just didn't quite finish the play. They made a good play. You gotta give Ron Artest credit. He ran down the ball and got it in the basket. For us, I don't see anything negative about it. I think the only thing that's negative is the way we approached the game a little bit. We weren't quite as aggressive, and they got into us defensively.
And we struggled a little bit getting in our offense. But on the defensive side of the ball, we did great. I mean, we've now gotten them down from 58% to 41%. So we did a great job, and they keep talking about the zone, and our zone has been fine.

Q. (Off microphone)?
COACH GENTRY: They decided to switch the screens. If you're going to put Pau or Bynum or Lamar on Steve we asked him to be aggressive. That's what he did. He did a great job. I thought everything we did was fine. We're in a situation where we just didn't quite get it done.
It was one play here that made the difference in the game. And we're disappointed. We're not going to get discouraged, though. We're not a team to get discouraged. We get disappointed, and the first thing that Steve said when we went in the locker room was that just forget about this, there's time to concentrate on the next game. He's exactly right.
We'll look at it, and we'll find some things that we need to get better at. Obviously, the offensive rebounds tonight hurt us. They ended up with 19 of them. And we had done such a great job at our place, that we will have to do a better job in that area. But all around, I thought once we got into the open court and started to play and started to play aggressively, I thought we did a real good job.
Hey, they're a very good team. And we had an opportunity to win and didn't quite get it done. But we're not going to get discouraged. We're not happy, I can tell you that. We're very disappointed. We're not jovial. But we'll be okay?
THE MODERATOR: Thank you.

End of FastScripts

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