Thoughts from Kirilenko, Boozer, Williams and Sloan

LOS ANGELES – Some thoughts from the Jazz heading into Sunday’s Game 1 of their first-round, best-of-seven NBA Western Conference playoff series with the Los Angeles Lakers:

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Andrei Kirilenko:
* “We need to get a win on the road. If we want to be in the next round, we have to win there.
* “We pretty much know the way they play. All we can do – we need just to stay with our game, and be a little bit more focused. Because the Lakers, those kinds of teams, you can’t allow yourself to make a lot of mistakes.
* “I think we have pretty good chances, if we stay with our game. We have to improve our defense a little bit. Don’t allow them to score layups on us. … If we stay inside and force the Lakers to play from outside, I think we’ve got a good chance.”

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Carlos Boozer:
* “What we learned form the last two weeks is we need our defense. I think we knew that all season, but we learned it the hard way the last couple weeks.
* “For us to win the series, we’ve got to play great defense.

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Deron Williams:
* “We finished the season kind of weak, but it’s over with now. We have a chance to right the ship, and turn things around.
* “We’ve just got to figure out what was going on, how to turn it around. Just go out there and play basketball. Go out there and have fun. You know, this should be fun for us.
* “I still feel like we are a championship team. We have the right pieces here. We just have to go out there and play the game.

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Jerry Sloan:
* “It all depends on how we come prepared, how we get ready to play them, and (if) we try to do a better job defensively on them.
* “If you have any pride in yourself, and you have any pride in your organization as a player, then you’ll rise to the occasion, be as good as you can be.”

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