Here is what they said after the Hawks’ 105-103 loss to the Lakers Sunday night:
“I’m happy with how our guys responded in the second half. They competed in a lot of different ways and played the way we want to play for 48 minutes. Obviously, we put ourselves in a position where we had to respond. We’ll talk about that and work on that also. The group knows we have to come out more ready, more focused, have an edge and we don’t want to get down by that many points. I’m really happy with the group.”
- Hawks coach Mike Budenholzer opening statement
Like most plays there are multiple options and Kyle Korver is obviously one of them. Pero (Antic) made a great pass to Kyle and Kyle thought he was open and took the shot. Any time Kyle thinks he is open, I want Kyle to shoot it.”
- Budenholzer on final shot attempt
“We’ll have to look at the tape. I hope that’s now how we’ll describe it. If we were standing around watching then that is obviously not what we want to be doing. I think Jordan is a really, really good offense rebounder. He’s committed. He goes hard. He’s athletic. We have to find somebody to put a body on him. We probably can find multiple players to put a body on him. A defense rebound can win or lose you a game. We didn’t get the defensive rebound that we needed there.”
- Budenholzer on the Lakers’ Jordan Hill late rebound
“Free throw shooting is one of those things that becomes a little bit contagious. … I think we’ll keep working on them in practice, before practice and after practice, and put the time in. We are confident our guys are going to make free throws.”
- Budenholzer on Hawks shooting 14 of 26 from free-throw line
“It says a lot but we can’t put ourselves in that situation to always have to climb uphill. Commend us for fighting back but we have to do a better job starting the game off.”
- Paul Millsap on second-half rally
“They just came out and hit us first. I don’t think that we came out with the right mindset. Coach definitely challenged us in the second half and we were much better.”
- Al Horford on slow start
“We needed to pick it up. We needed to get after it. We needed to be better on defense and to get after it. When we did that we saw the change in the game. I thought that second unit really changed it early in the fourth, led by Dennis (Schroder), making plays and getting momentum going our way.”
- Horford on late rally
You are always wanting that call. There was a big scramble. I couldn’t really see it but it was close.”
- Kyle Korver on late blocking foul
“I thought it definitely was a block. I thought he didn’t have to come out of that circle and he slid right underneath me while I was in the air so I thought it was a pretty good call. I mean, obviously, it was a critical moment so they had to go and re-check it but I was pretty comfortable and confident.”
- Pau Gasol on blocking foul against Millsap
“I thought Pau got a good look on the baseline and then Jordan Hill, who’s been big for us, snuck in there, got us another offensive rebound and gave us the last shot. We went pick and roll with Pau, I was able to slide it iin there and obviously he did the rest. He made two big free throws and we got a great stop at the end.’
- Steve Nash on final seconds of the game
“We’ve got a lot of stuff we’ve got to cure and tomorrow we’ll look at the stuff and we need to talk about and get better. … For whatever reason, we go up 15 and we have great energy, then all of a sudden … we start to get soft on defense without a lot of energy. Then we start to get a little selfish and we stopped thinking about moving the ball. Those are two things we have to cure.”
- Lakers coach Mike D’Antoni on Hawks comeback
