Jerry Sloan Job Quotations

When we did go inside, it was kind of like an adventure in there with the way we shot the ball a few times to see if we could get it up on the glass. They did a terrific job standing us up and taking us out of our offense and we settled for that.

We did a very poor job in trying to block them off of the boards. They just killed us on the offensive boards.

Nelson did a great job keeping us off balance. I thought his play was terrific. He's strong ... he can score, he was able to get people the basketball and help them get the kinds of shots they wanted. That's one of the big things that hurt us.

I had said it would be a big disappointment if the team didn't make the playoffs. I'm not sure that we have enough guys that are hungry enough to want to be in the playoffs. The toughness to be able to get there sometimes doesn't show up. I take responsibility for that. That's my job to make them tougher or whatever it takes for them to be able to play.

He should be upset. I was upset, too ? but my job is to try to get these guys to go play again (tonight). He always has the right to do whatever he wants to do. I know that.

I thought he (Palacio) played pretty well. He played defense well, which is tough no matter which of those guys you put him on. The important thing is we did a good job of keeping them on top of the basket and made them shoot over the top of us.

We did a terrible job altogether trying to defend them.

We've got to do a better job finishing the ballgame. We don't want to leave anybody open on a 3-point shot.

We gave (Sacramento) everything they needed to get their game going and win the ball game. I took the timeout with four minutes left in the fourth because I felt like the guys that were in just weren't going to get the job done.

We did a better job of staying in front of them and not letting them get on top of the basket every time. And that was a huge thing because the first half was atrocious.

They did a good job of getting after us. We looked like we were moving in mud.

I'm really glad for what happened to Karl Malone, but these guys weren't involved in that that much. Their basic job is to get ready and play basketball, and I didn't think we came out with that intention.

Their basic job is to get ready to play basketball and I didn't think we came out with that intention, whatever the situation. There are a lot of distractions in basketball.

Andrei was terrific. He was all over the place. He was terrific defensively, he shot the ball well and did a terrific job passing the ball. I never took him out the second half. Usually I take him out, but he was so alive tonight I didn't take him out at all.