Tomjanovich Is Almost 100% Happy

A day later, it still looked good to the Houston Rockets, but no cigar.

“We played pretty damn good,” Coach Rudy Tomjanovich said Monday. “We’d be sitting on top of the world right now in a great situation but we made mistakes at the end of the game.

“I don’t know if our offense is going to be that good [in Game 2]--52%, on the road, in a playoff game, was fantastic. Outrunning them, out-rebounding them, out-shooting them from the free-throw line, those are statistics that usually win games. . . .

“What I’m going to do with these guys today, I’m going to let them know all the good things that we did. Then we’re going to look at the last three minutes [when Cuttino Mobley and Scottie Pippen committed turnovers] and try to learn from that.”

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Charles Barkley, asked about Derek Fisher’s big game: “He was terrific but it wouldn’t have mattered if we hadn’t turned the ball over. None of those things would have mattered.

“It was a frustrating night. I sat in the room all night, just disappointed. Everybody is going to talk about how well Glen Rice, how well Shaq and everybody played, but if we had taken care of our business, we would have won the game.

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If it was surprising that the Rockets gave the ball to Mobley rather than Pippen on the last play, it didn’t surprise the Rocket players.

“We talked about it in the huddle and that’s what the guys wanted to do,” Pippen said. “We felt that was the highest percentage deal.

“You’ve got to understand, this was a pick-and-roll. We played John Stockton, they ran a pick-and-roll, somebody stepped in and somebody else got a shot.”

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Barkley on the Lakers’ problems this season: “It’s just frustrating watching a team with that much talent. . . . I see Jerry West has been getting a lot of negative criticism. Let me tell you something, Jerry West is one of the few really good people in sports. Most of these people are full of. . . . But Jerry West is one of the true gentlemen and true great guys in sports.”