What they were saying after the Lakers' 119-109 win over Utah in Tuesday's Game 2 of their first-round playoff series:

The Lakers
Phil Jackson's initial postgame remarks:
"An offensive display. Not always great ball handling, but a lot of great shooting and scoring out there tonight. ... That's a good win. It's hard to beat a team three times in succession and that was a trial out there for us tonight."

Jackson, on holding on after the Jazz cut the lead from 20 points to three:
"We tried to cork the lane a little bit but they shot 3-pointers well (8 of 19). I think it was turnovers more than anything else. There isn't a lot of defense for turnovers when you throw the ball away that many times."
The Lakers had 34 points off 20 Utah turnovers; Utah had 19 points off 21 Lakers turnovers.

Jackson, on the play of the bench:
"Lamar (Odom) had a big game off the bench. I thought Shannon (Brown) played fine. If we need guys to step in, we get an assist like tonight. We have to have a bench that supports the starters.
"I changed the rotation a bit in the third and fourth quarters. Kobe wanted to stay in so I left him in the game, and that shortened our bench this time."
Odom had 19 points and Brown scored 12, helping the Lakers to a 37-28 edge in bench scoring.

Pau Gasol, on the start:
"Well, it was a great start on our part and I think the energy was excellent. We were playing really well, making shots and coming up with defensive stops. It was the right start. We needed that start to get ourselves going and make sure we got a nice early lead so we could avoid trouble down the stretch."

Gasol, on the finish:
"It was a little surprising, I guess, to see them that close, so close at the end. But they have a good quality team. They played well. They fought all the way through."

Trevor Ariza, on the way the Lakers have been giving up leads:
"I don't think we gave it up to them. We didn't give up any leads. They cut into it, but we didn't give it up."

Andrew Bynum, on the need to improve defensively:
"Most definitely, we are going to have to change what we are doing on defense, because obviously they are reading it and picking it apart."

Bynum, on trying to contain Deron Williams, who had 35 points and nine assists:
"He definitely was (good) tonight and we have to figure out a way to stop that. In Utah, I think it will be different -- out there, they'll get even more calls than they did tonight. ... And the team is going to be hotter just because the crowd is going to be into it for them."

The Jazz
Coach Jerry Sloan, on the team's problems early relative to its late run:
"One of the things that caused us not to have the opportunity to do that was the number of turnovers we had. I think we gave up 30 points at the end of three quarters. ... We came down the stretch and the turnovers broke our back.
"We had a chance to be in the ballgame in the third quarter a couple of times and then we turned the ball over. That's when you have to have patience and try to get a good shot so you have a chance to hopefully rebound. We just got too anxious, I guess."

Sloan, on what the team takes away from Los Angeles:
"I think we were a better team playing with them than we were to start with. I think that's the No. 1 thing you have to take away. I think we're playing harder and you have to learn how to play hard, and then you start making your shots better, you get into a rhythm of playing hard and being able to shoot better."

Sloan, on the match-up problems with the Lakers:
"With the people we have right now we just don't have a lot of length and we've gone to a smaller lineup to try to combat that. That's dangers to do. If we get everybody playing hard and guys driving to the basket, we come off our man instead of letting them drive the ball to the basket. We've got to be more aggressive that way."

Deron Williams, on Utah's belief it could come back:
"We were pretty confident. We had a little roll going. We just turned the ball over at the wrong time and it kind of led to a snowball effect. One turnover led to another and they made us pay."

Williams, on Sloan's comment that the team got anxious when it had some opportunities:
"That's a little bit of my fault. I'm the point guard on the floor. I have to step up and calm everybody down, make sure we get something every time we get down on the floor so that turnovers don't happen. We get a little frantic out there and they pick up their defense to get a basket to even the score, and it cost us the ballgame."

Carlos Boozer, rating Utah's performance:
"At the end of the day I think we played a lot better in Game 2 than we did in Game 1. We still got down by a lot early but we were able to fight back. We had chances to win it in the fourth quarter. I think we cut it down to a single possession, two possessions. They just made plays."

Boozer, on the Lakers' start:
"They do a good job of coming at you early and trying to blow you out early. They are a very efficient team. They run their cuts hard, they make shots and they play good defense. For us, we need to try to combat that, make them work a little harder, hopefully make them miss a couple more shots."

What they were saying after the Lakers' 113-100 win over Utah in Sunday's playoff opener:

The Lakers
Coach Phil Jackson, on his team's lackluster second half:
"I thought we played relatively good defense first half, and the second half ... foul after foul after foul, rebounds, offensive rebounds, those are the things we harped on all week about having to watch that particular aspect of our game."

Shannon Brown, who played more than 21 minutes and saw a whole lot of Utah's Deron Williams (16 points, 17 assists):
"Deron's a great point guard, man, and he's going to do what he has to do for his team to win. And my job is to go out and make that as hard as possible.
"But he has a triple threat. As long as he's not getting off and his teammates aren't getting off -- we've got to contain one or the other."

Brown (nine points, two rebounds, three assists, two turnovers), who has moved past Jordan Farmar as first guard off the bench:
"I'm feeling great. I'm just trying to go out and do what I've got to do to help the team win. The thing with my teammates and our coaches, they have a lot of confidence in me. If they don't put me in, I can't perform.
You've got to have confidence in your abilities, especially in this game. Because if you don't, you get eaten alive out there. There's a bunch of wolves out there."

Kobe Bryant (24 points, four rebounds, eight assists), on Brown:
"He works extremely hard, as all our players do. You know, he's in the gym early; he's working on his shot. When I see that, it makes it even easier for me to trust him in a game situation."

Andrew Bynum (seven points, three rebounds, a steal, two turnovers and five fouls in 20:26) on what he learned going forward:
"My mindset going in is that I'm going to be a lot more aggressive in the next game. I'm going to play a lot more out there. Even though I did get into foul trouble this game, I'm going to look at the tape, see what happened out there, and try to adjust."

The Jazz
Coach Jerry Sloan, on the start:
-- "We shot 48 shots in the first half and ended up shooting 36 percent, I believe. [17 of 48, 35.4 percent] Some of those were makeable shots, but they're leaving us open for a reason, because we're not great shooters out there. And we took some of those shots, I guess, just to try to prove we could make a shot, and consequently, they didn't go down for us."
-- "We kind of looked like deer in the headlights to start off with. I was really kind of shocked that we would play that way, but some of our guys are young guys, and hopefully they'll learn. We have to play four games, and hopefully we'll get better each time we play 'em, and we'll see what happens."
-- "It wasn't about running an offense. We have a tendency to think, 'I've got to get me a couple of shots in the ballgame, so I can get my numbers right away.' Well, that didn't work very well. And that doesn't go very well for us to have a chance to win.
"You have to execute somewhat of an offense. Otherwise it's mashed potatoes out there, and you don't have anything. And that's what we ended up with."

Sloan, on the Lakers' size advantage:
"We're obviously short out there to start with, and then we get shorter when we have to substitute. And they're a big, long team anyway, and we can't seem to make our guys any taller. If I could do that, maybe we'd be a little bit better off."

Sloan, on the Lakers' 55.6-percent shooting:
"The fact is they scored 55 points in the paint. I think a lot of that has to do with their size and their physical ability to take advantage of you. And we've got to do a better job of trying to help each other. We got caught in between a few times, and that gives them an opportunity to get on top of the basket."

Sloan, on his team's personality:
"We're not a nasty team. Most of the teams we've had here have been pretty nasty in that they'll get after you from daylight to dark. We're just learning how to get after it a little bit more as we go along with younger guys. And part of that's my fault. I take full responsibility for that, because I probably haven't been nasty enough with 'em. ...
"Deron Williams has played a major role in the playoffs, and a couple of other guys have not been in those situations to know, you know, how late we were so many times in trying to get over and get help, trying to stand guys up and play the game where you don't let them run with a tuxedo on all the time."

Matt Harpring (eight points, one assist in 14:35):
"You can't get down twenty-something points at halftime and try to make a comeback on the road in the playoffs. We played harder and focused on our offense, but we found ourselves in the first half sometimes at a place, not knowing our position at offense or on defense. That's just inexcusable in the playoffs."

Paul Millsap (15 points, eight rebounds, one assist, one turnover in 25:15 off the bench) on defense:
"We have to be physical as a team, put the pressure on the refs and be strong while we're down there. I feel good about the second half. The second half was great. You're seeing guys down there banging, working and helping each other out on defense.
"It starts on the defensive end. We can't give up 65 points like we did in the first half [actually, it was 62] and expect to win a game on the road. If we can get that down pat and play solid defense the first two quarters and the last two quarters, we'll be all right."