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NBA WESTERN CONFERENCE FINALS: SUNS v LAKERS

May 23, 2010

Alvin Gentry

PHOENIX, ARIZONA: Game Three

Suns Â– 118
Lakers - 109

THE MODERATOR: Questions.

Q. Can you talk about the effectiveness of the zone tonight, the difference in how it worked tonight versus Games 1 and 2?
COACH GENTRY: It's the difference in them shooting 58 percent as opposed to 48 percent. And the shots with Kobe we couldn't do anything about. The ones early in the game where he's jumping up and just shooting over the top of you, all you can do is put a hand in his face and hope they miss.
And he shot it well. The only good thing about it was that as the game was going on, most of them were jump shots. They weren't scoring in the paint. We did have some lapses there against the zone where Pau got inside, but for the most part I thought most of the shots were coming from the outside.
We did a really good job in the rotations in the zone and they still have some shots that didn't go in that's been going in the last couple of nights and that's what you have to try to make them do, still have to try to have them beat you over the top and not have what they did the last two games.

Q. (Question off microphone)?
COACH GENTRY: That's in Canada. We can play a zone. I told you we'd play some zone. I didn't think we'd play like 80 percent zone.

Q. Favorite question, why not more zone? Why haven't we seen it earlier in the series?
COACH GENTRY: We've tried it a few times, and, to be honest, in the practice the other day it's the worse it's ever been. It really was. I got really upset because I didn't think it was very good at all. And so when they started the game making a ton of shots, we said, well, we've got to give it a try.
Then we gave it a try and came up with some stops. And the first half I think they were 4 for 21 against it. So we just said we'd play it the whole second half. It's easier than trying to guard those guys on the inside and it's also easier than trying to guard Kobe.
So tonight it worked. And we stuck with it.

Q. Amar'e's aggressiveness?
COACH GENTRY: He started the game with a lot of energy. We always say in this offense, that the ball will find energy. And I thought he just did a good job of being aggressive and taking the ball to the basket and getting to the foul line. That's keeping them from getting to the foul line.
And just really I thought he was aggressive the entire game. So because of that we shot a lot of foul shots.

Q. Would you say he seemed to pick his game through that adversity, and yesterday there was a lot of free agency talk, picked it up. What is it about him that seems like when there's some other issues he deals with he seems --
COACH GENTRY: I don't know, but I would like you to ask him ten questions about free agency tonight. I have no idea.
But I knew that Amar'e would respond. He's a competitor. He knows that he didn't play well in LA. And as we said, when we got back here, the only thing that we were looking at -- we have to win one game. We had to win one game. And you know we did a good job tonight of doing that. Now we have to put all of our focus on Tuesday to try to win another game.

Q. Robin Lopez came up huge tonight?
COACH GENTRY: He was playing really well before he got hurt. He was doing a really good job for us before he got hurt. As I said right from the start, offensively he's been a huge surprise. We didn't think that he would be that advanced offensively for us.
But he's done a good job. He's been great at the screening rolls and being able to catch and finish. He's also been really good really at catching and making the little 15-foot shot, which really has been a surprise.
I thought he played great. I thought it was a total team effort. We played hard. We were very competitive. And then, once again, I thought J-Rich made a couple of really big baskets for us.

Q. When there's a guy like Bynum who is obviously struggling physically, are you able to take advantage of that in any way? Are you coaching your guys to do anything different when he's hurting than when he's healthy?
COACH GENTRY: No, not really. I mean, he's long and he's huge. We try to make him play out on the floor. That's the only thing we try to make him do.
We try to get him involved in screening rolls. But we would do that anyway. It wouldn't matter if he was healthy or not healthy. That's what we do.
So we don't try to do -- we didn't try to do anything special against him. We just kind of did -- took what the defense gave us, really.

Q. What do you need to do differently with the bench to get them going? Especially Channing, struggling with the shot?
COACH GENTRY: He's just not making shots. And there's nothing anyone can do except he just has to step up and make shots. We don't talk about it. And we'll still stick him in the game. If he's open we told him he has to shoot the shot, because in the offense, if you don't shoot the shot, it hurts as much as it does shooting a bad shot.
He has just got to continue to step in and think they're going in, and somewhere along the line you can't be as good a shooter as he is and not make shots.
So he has to keep playing. And as far as the bench, you know, Goran and those guys played well. They're not playing the same amount of minutes they have been the regular season. Obviously that plays into it somewhat. We still have to have those guys, we'll still need them, and we'll continue to play them.

Q. How much does Amar'e driving from the wing not only neutralize Pau's size but like get a lot of free throws, is that something you saw on film the last couple of days?
COACH GENTRY: Yeah, we just tried to put him in a position where he couldn't go quickly, where they couldn't set the half-court defense. When they set the half-court defense, they do a really good job. They did a really good job the two games out there of really cutting off all the avenues and lanes and drive to the basket.
We thought we have to go a little bit quicker to try to get there. We shot free throws tonight because we were aggressive, I thought.

Q. Was that a major game plan? Because everybody went to the basket. It was like the whole team.
COACH GENTRY: We knew we had to try to get the ball to the basket. And we still didn't shoot it well. For some reason, they do a great job of running us off 3s, and we can't seem to make them.
J-Rich made a couple of big ones for us, but for the most part we went 5 for 20 tonight. We're just a much better shooting team than that. But these guys are very aggressive and run you off.
THE MODERATOR: Thank you, Coach.

End of FastScripts

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