What they said after the Hawks’ 101-93 Game 1 victory over the Pacers Saturday night:
“Defensively, we’ll look at the film and there are areas where we can clean up and improve and there are areas where our activity and our togetherness were good. The defensive end of the court is where we need to improve and that is what we’ve been talking about down the stretch of the regular season. That is what is going to give us a chance to win. All five guys committed to rebounding. Offensively, if we can play with some pace and move the ball and do the things we’ve been talking about, that is how we want to play. Again, at times we didn’t move it the way we need to but there were times when the ball moved well and we were able to get good opportunities. Our guys competed and that is the most important thing.”
- Hawks coach Mike Budenholzer’s opening statement
“I’m happy for our guys to be rewarded for their efforts and for the way they played together. But there is a lot of basketball. It’s only one game. Our goal is to continue to get better and focus on where we need to improve, not be too happy, not let that seep in.”
- Budenholzer on feelings after winning Game 1
“All year, we have encouraged Jeff (Teague) to be aggressive. He knows how important he is to us. When he is aggressive, it just creates opportunities for himself, creates opportunities for his teammates. He has to make decisions when to score, when to pass, all of those things. He has been getting better and better as the year goes on.”
- Budenholzer on Jeff Teague
“Getting off to a good start against such a good team is important. It’s not something that we necessarily talked about but they are a number one seed for a reason. They are an excellent basketball team. So for our group to get off to a good start and a good first quarter, I think they hit the 3 at the end of the quarter to give them 22 points, defensively stem the tide, or whatever word you want to use, that is what we’ve been thinking about the last two or three days.”
- Budenholzer on Hawks fast start
“Throughout the game he used the elbow a lot. The referee warned him. I made a foul. It wasn’t dirty, just a normal foul. He just came in my face for no reason. I did nothing but I’m not going to back down. It’s too expensive to do something else. So I just stand still.”
- Pero Antic on getting double technical with David West
“If it did, I’m glad. But I’m not the kind of person to create something like that to spark the team. This team plays together.”
- Antic on whether incident was spark
“In the playoffs, every game is its own monster. Game to game things change and so we’re happy to get Game 1 and we’ll go watch the tape the next couple of days.”
- Kyle Korver on victory
“It’s great. The mindset when you are the road team coming in is to get one of the two. That is what everyone always says, right? We got the first one. We’ll try to get another one. At this point, we really just want to keep playing good basketball. I thought we played with great pace. We moved the ball. We found the open man. We didn’t shoot the ball great. We shot the ball good enough to be effective. We had some great moments. We didn’t finish the game well. That gives them a little bit of confidence. We had a little lull in the second quarter but otherwise I thought we played pretty solid.”
- Korver on getting home-court advantage
“The third quarter we got stops. That was the biggest thing for us. We got stops and were able to get out and run. That is when we are at our best. We don’t want to play against that set defense with (Roy) Hibbert at the basket. I think we held them to 16 points in the third quarter and three of them were that bank shot on the fast break for 3. So, we really just turned up the defense and had a great third quarter.”
- Korver on Hawks’ third quarter
“It feels great to get one. We had guarded confidence because we beat them twice pretty handily. It was great to get that first one.”
- Elton Brand on win
“After that 7-2 push. We had some turnovers and we didn’t get in our sets. Once we fought back and got the game under control, we felt good. After that initial run by them, we felt good all game.”
- Brand on when Hawks stemmed Pacers’ initial start
“I don’t think it was offensively. We did it on defense. We were able to get out an attack and that opened it up for everybody else by getting to the basket. The defense did its job in the third quarter.”
- Paul Millsap on third quarter
“We don’t think we are an eighth seed. We think we are better than an eighth seed. Throughout the season, we had injuries. Whatever the case may be, we dropped games but, to us, our confidence is high because we don’t think we are an eighth seed.”
- Millsap on upsetting top seed
“I just wanted to be aggressive. They are a great defensive team. They are big, long and athletic. You have to drive the ball pretty aggressive to get it to the open man. We’ve got a lot of shot makers. We know they are a long team that likes to clog the paint. But we want to stretch the floor against them.”
- Jeff Teague on third quarter
“For us, we have a lot of shooters, shooting bigs. It works to our advantage. Pero and those guys can really stretch the floor. When Paul is making 3-pointers and Pero is making 3-pointers we are a tough team to guard.”
- Teague on why able to have success inside
“We didn’t play nearly well enough to beat this basketball team on either end of the court,”
- Pacers coach Frank Vogel
