Phil Jackson Stay Quotations

We remind our players that this is something that was a special night in a heated situation but it's not going to be a steady diet for us. The onus on Kobe is to stay inside the team offense. The onus on the players is to pick it up a little bit better.

I've seen quite a few guys do that in his situation, focused. He wanted to stay in, in the second quarter. He asked to stay in so he could get loose, get a second wind.

I wouldn't ask him to go on the trip. We want him to stay behind, work out and get an opportunity to condition himself. It makes no sense for him to go along on the trip and stay in the hotel while we play.

We had some dramatic plays down the stretch. Kobe stayed very well inside of what we were trying to do. We kind of died on the vine a couple of times when the shot clock was running down. Then we were able to find that penetrating pass. We were able to find a couple of things that worked for us.

We had some luck with us tonight, ... We were fortunate to stay in this game. We made a lot of mistakes, obviously, but we learned from them.

He stayed very well inside of what we're trying to do.

We were flat tonight. We are still not quite good enough to stay with a team like that.

He played with the energy and the enthusiasm and threw his body around out there, things that we want to see players do. That helped us. I thought he ran out of gas at one point in that fourth quarter. Otherwise, I probably would have had him stay on the floor.

We've got a week that's real busy ahead of us. We've got to stay the course, and that's important for us right now.