Pelicans Head Coach Alvin Gentry
On the second quarter:
“Yeah, that’s been our Achilles heel. We are somewhere along the line of a 40-point quarter and those are hard to survive in this league. That’s where they got the separation. Once again, you’re playing uphill the rest of the game and it doesn’t matter what kind of run you make, you would have to have a perfect storm. Those just don’t exist very much in the NBA when you’re down 25 points and you’re able to get it all the way back. You can get it to even under double-digits, but at the end of the day to come all the way back from a lead like that is really, really tough to do. I was disappointed in our transition defense. I know we were cross-matched but we’ve got to start getting back on the raise of the shot and being able to set our defense. I think they had 30 fast break points in the first half. You’re not going to be able to survive that as a team. It was a little disappointing. It’s the thing that we worked on and had such a point of emphasis on, and we just didn’t get back. Obviously with this team right here, as I’ve said, every guy who played out there tonight was on a championship team. They know what it takes to win a championship and you have to compete on that same level. Obviously, we’ve got to be able to execute better. We’ve got to be able to put the ball in the basket. We went through a tough stretch there at the start of the quarter where we got outscored 11 nothing. We had six really good looks, two right at the basket. We didn’t get them in the basket and they did. That’s where the separation comes.”
On defensive turnaround:
“Well, we can do one of two things, and we’ve changed a little bit schematically what we are trying to do. The next step is we have to find somebody that will do it. We will start playing different combinations of guys, like we did tonight. That’s not a threat, it’s just what you’ve got to do as a coach. If the people we have out there, if they can’t do what we’re expecting them to do, then the next thing for us to do is we have to try and find someone else.”
Pelicans Forward Brandon Ingram
On how he thinks the team could’ve done better in the second half:
“I always look at myself before I look at the team and I think I could’ve done a better job of taking the defense on my match-up for sure. Playing defense without fouling, standing to my guy and I think when we take away some of those baskets we can start our fast-breaking and feel a little more confident and comfortable when we go up and down the basketball floor.”
On his thoughts about his group of teammates that played in the fourth quarter:
“They always have been big for us. They bring in a lot of scores and a lot of shooting…guys that play the right way on the basketball floor. I think it was a good spark for them”
Pelicans Guard Nickeil Alexander-Walker
On if he felt like things were getting better in the fourth quarter:
“The momentum felt like it was going in our favor, but it’s kind of like too little and too late at the same time. It’s good to know that it’s there. There are flashes of it, so we know that we are capable of doing it. We just have to find a way to make it last for 48 minutes.”
On what he was telling himself at half-time:
“You have to keep fighting. We held our way through the first quarter. That hump, we just have to find a way to get over it. It comes at different times in games, and I think if we continue to fight then we should be able to, but I think as the game progresses we have to find ways to fight that resistance against us.”
