On scoring 134 points not being enough to win tonight’s game:
“No, I think we got seduced into playing a certain kind of way that wasn’t going to be what we needed to do to try and win the game. They’ve been the best offensive team in the league the last couple of weeks as far as pace, scoring. They scored 145 points on the (Los Angeles) Clippers. We needed to start the game guarding, keeping them out of the paint – we didn’t do any of those things so you let that team out in the open floor, all of a sudden, they’re making shots and then you put yourself in a tough situation. Can’t exchange baskets. We talked about that earlier today. You’re just not in a situation where you can exchange baskets. That’s exactly the way they want to play. They want to seduce you into just running up and down, taking shots, playing that way and we did not guard. They had 72 points in the paint. It’s not like they were throwing it in to some seven-foot guy down there so most of them were penetrating drives and scoring at the rim. We just didn’t do a very good job defensively at guarding at all. Gave up 44 (points) in the second quarter. You score 37 points in the (second) quarter, you would think that would give you some separation – it didn’t at all. Hopefully, this is a game that we understand and we learn from because we can’t afford not to be locked in and we can’t afford not to be into the ball. There were so many bad takes and layups. We didn’t do a very good job defensively.”
On if the win earlier in the season against Golden State, with a poor defensive effort, impacted the performance tonight early on from a young Pelicans team::
“Well you’re not going to be able to make it up anyway. We’re in a situation where we’re trying to win basketball games to stay relevant. You can’t win it if you don’t play defense. One of the things that I told them and I told them early on is that I’ve tried that way. We tried it in Phoenix that way. It doesn’t work. I mean it will work – you’ll win games – but if you want to be a team that’s relevant and then be relevant in the playoffs if you’re fortunate enough to get there, you’ve got to be able to guard. You can’t just run up and down, try to outscore everyone and that’s what we tried to do tonight.”
FORWARD ZION WILLIAMSON
On how he feels about playing in a back-to-back tomorrow:
“I feel fine. We’ve got a great training staff. They did the necessary recovery things, and they’ll have me ready for tomorrow.”
On coming in and playing games with no room for error in a playoff push so early in his career:
“That’s the situation you want to be put in. I think that brings the greatness out in everybody. And that’s one of those things where it’s like that adversity is in front of you, what are you going to do about it?”
On if there was a moment that they could feel the game slipping away and if they tried to get it back:
“I think the whole game was just us scoring back and forth pretty much, and that’s not the way we like to play but we will look at this and try to get better tomorrow.”
On what he thinks went wrong defensively tonight:
“Just the sense of urgency. I think that we weren’t that aggressive on the defensive end to make them feel us every single time down the basketball floor and that’s something we have to get better at.”
On what went wrong on the defensive end tonight:
“I think we just got lured into the way they played. From there exchanging baskets, we know we can score but we are actually pretty good at defense, so tomorrow we have to really play defense.”
On if what he’s seen from the Timberwolves in their past few games and if they brought that energy tonight:
“Yeah. I think in the first quarter we did a pretty good job. We had them at like 28 points or something like that. If we can be consistent like that against any team, I think we will really have a chance to win but defensively we need to pick it up.”
