The team played well enough to win it, but they didn't finish. When you're on the road, you have to do some things to win, because it's a bit extra special.

They came out to play Kobe really tough, a little bit harder I think than the referees wanted to see happen. I think in the process of coming out to play hard they crossed the line a little bit.

I think all our players were encouraged by the effort, and thought we had the right idea. Our execution came up a little bit short.

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.

He's hired former NBA referees to monitor the game tapes. He sends out a weekly report on the referees. There's some things that Mark has done to turn it a little bit in his favor. That's good.

I think some of our guys hit a little bit of a wall here. We talked a lot about that ... This is a heavy time to play basketball. You've really got to take care of yourself. I had a couple of guys fighting through things out there, under-the-weather type of things. They just couldn't get themselves going.