Wednesday, April 09, 2008

In Their Own Words

Pacers 112 Hawks 98

Boxscore

Gameflow

Monday, April 7

Josh Smith:
"Don't think we don't know it, that we don't feel it. We have to keep our eyes on the prize right now. We know that, too. But if we play like we did in [Saturday's win] in Philadelphia ... we just have to handle our business."

"We've had our ups and downs along that way, but we're in a good position now. We just have to finish what we started."
Tuesday, April 8

Josh Smith:
"This is the game we needed to win to lock things up, and we didn't do it. Now we have to go down to the wire with this thing and play every game like it's our last."
Joe Johnson:
"We just added a level of drama to this whole thing by not taking care of our business. They just played harder than us. It's how hard they played. We don't play hard, we get our [expletive] kicked. Point blank."
Mike Woodson:
"Unfortunately you have to play four quarters. We only played one quarter. We got back in it and cut it to 10 twice. But you can't spot this team 30 points and expect to come back and win. We didn't have any kind of defensive presence. You're talking about making the playoffs; you better play defense and rebound the ball to give yourself a chance to win."
Joe Johnson:
"That's an inexcusable defensive effort. I don't think we realize what it was going to take [defensively] and it showed in the way we played."
Joe Johnson:
"We acted like we didn't want to play tonight, and if you can't get up for this game, you don't need to be playing at all."
Ballhype: hype it up!

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

How do professional players near the end of an 82 game season not know how much effort is required to play defense? That's pathetic. And why didn't Woodson bench the entire first team when the lead got to 28 both to send a message to them they didn't deserve to be on the floor with the way they were playing and to get them badly needed rest? (Un?)fortunately, the Hawks have a couple of gimmes in games against Miami and New York and should have a shot against Orlando and Boston who will likely not be playing their starters at full force. They should still make the playoffs only to get demolished by Boston.