Rasual Butler Quotations

When we are at home and the crowd is going, we run just a little bit faster, jump a little bit higher. This crowd was so electrifying, it gives you goose bumps at times and as a young team, we feed off that.

I didn't do a good job against Denver. So the last two days I worked on my stroke. Coach (Byron Scott) told me to continue to take my shots. I had a lot of open 3-pointers and some open drives to the basket.

I was a little surprised. But I understand my role on this team. I extend the defense and allow guys like David West room to operate down low and Chris Paul and Speedy Claxton to penetrate. When they get you open looks, it's up to me to knock shots down, and tonight I hit them.

It felt really good. It's something that I'll think about - that I was able to help this team get one (victory) before we left this city.

We had great crowd support. I think that it definitely had something to do with it.

We definitely wanted to the win for this city. But we also needed to end this streak. We really believe we can make the playoffs.

We understand we have to scratch and claw our way to every one of these victories down the stretch. It feels real good to know that we're still in the hunt. We feel we're absolutely a playoff-caliber team, even though we're a young team. And we know we have to go out there and prove that.

We were riding high and then the thing crashed on us a little bit. We've been fighting ever since and because we were working so hard to get these wins and coming up short, it was devastating. But ... we've still got a lot of fight left in us and we scratched and clawed our way to a victory tonight.

We have great fans here in Oklahoma. It's unfortunate that Louisiana had such a tragedy that people don't really have the time to come out and support entertainment.

With that loud crowd out there, I think we're going to have one of the loudest crowds in the NBA, if not the loudest.

I want be someone that they know will defend them, ... They're all one-on-one players who come at you every night.

After I hit my first couple of shots, I knew I had it going a little bit.

You play for a good team like that, everybody has a specific job, ... If you're a guy who shoots well, that's all you do. If you're a guy who passes the ball well, that's what you do. But I saw this opportunity with the Hornets as something different, not just to be a shooting specialist, but having a chance to expand my game.

They had to rotate to David West because he is such a good shooter from 17 feet. But once they rotated, he saw me and swung it to me in rhythm and luckily for us, I was ... able to make the shot.

There were a lot of plays that knocked the wind out of them. We kept them at a distance.

It showed a lot of resilience, we showed toughness tonight. We showed a lot of character. Both our ball handlers were out tonight. ... I think it showed we have a lot of character on this team. We're trying to make a playoff push.

It's much different than being in Miami. There's not too many places you can go where people don't know who you are.

It's a new system for me, and I'm trying to go out there and make plays, ... Some days, I come in early to watch game tapes or talk to guys like P.J. Brown, Nachbar and David West, so they can give me some pointers about the offense. Coach Scott makes it easy for you because he lets you play your game. I'm trying to pay attention to everything.

Once I made a couple of shots, guys started looking for me. When it was my opportunity to run off some screens, I think I did a pretty good job of reading where the defense was going and gave myself some time to get off some shots.

I'm going out and trying to play the way I've been taught to play basketball, take good shots, try to play solid defense, rebound and just try to play the right way, that's all I'm really trying to do.

I knew that Ray is very capable of hitting that shot. So I just gave it the best effort I could to try to bother his shot, and luckily, I got a piece of it.

I'm just playing basketball. I've been blessed right now to step into a role with ( Desmond Mason ) being out and the coaching staff having great confidence in me to fill that role until he returns to this team. I'm just trying to take full advantage of it.