Pelicans Head Coach Stan Van Gundy
On the end of tonight’s win:
“The final couple minutes I thought played out well, other than a couple of turnovers. But I thought our defense was really,
really good the last couple of minutes. Now, when they got back in the game, I thought we got sloppy against their zone and
our defense broke down a little bit, but at the end of the game we got the job done, defensively, I thought very, very well.”
On Brandon Ingram and the control he had over the offense tonight:
“I thought he did a really good job, obviously. Sort of got us from behind, to the lead…we were riding him on every play. Then I
probably went too far with him. He had two turnovers down there in the stretch. I think he was tired at the end. I probably had
given him too much there, but yeah, obviously he both made plays and made shots that got us the lead. Look, I told these
guys afterwards, it sounds crazy, but as a coach, these are my favorite kinds of wins – not that I want to shoot like that every
night, but to shoot 38% and 20% from three in the NBA and be able to get a win against a good team, to me, is a great way to
win. Every team in this league – every team – can beat any team on their best night. The good teams have to be able to win on
less than their best nights and we did it by things we’ve been talking about since day one. Finally, we took care of the ball –
only eight turnovers to their 15. We got 12 offensive rebounds to their four and we get 28 free throw attempts to their eight. I
had sent them a text probably a month before training camp that just said, ‘The first step is we’ve got to get to where we don’t
beat ourselves,’ talking specifically about turnovers and fouls. We were able to win a game doing that, despite the fact that
we really, really struggled to shoot the ball.”
On the 15-8 turnover differential tonight:
“I thought we were active with our hands. I thought our defense, in general, was pretty good. We had a couple of three, fourminute stretches where we weren’t really good, but I thought, over the course of 48 minutes, we were pretty good defensively. I
thought we did a very good job on (DeMar) DeRozan – on his pick-and-rolls and on him individually. We did a good job staying
down on shot fakes. I thought defensively, we were good and we rebounded the ball. I was pretty happy, defensively.
Offensively, in spurts, I thought we got good ball movement. We’re still really a work in progress and we’re riding a lot of
individual play right now. We need to be a little bit better with ball movement and execution, but a good win for the third game
of the year.”
Pelicans Forward Zion Williamson
On his double-double tonight:
“That’s a big part of building a winning culture. When one thing isn’t working for you, don’t let it affect the other parts of your
game like defense and rebounding. Whatever I can do to help my team win, I’m going to do it.”
On the Pelicans’ defense tonight and holding San Antonio under 100 points:
“We were a lot better communicating tonight on defense and because of that communication, it let us get a lot of stops. At the
same time though, we have to understand the Spurs don’t settle for shots. They always try to find the best shot each time down
the court, so that can also play into it.”
Pelicans Guard Lonzo Ball
On tonight’s win:
“It felt good. We want to get as many wins as we can, obviously. In this league, you have to win in a variety of different ways if
you want to be a good team, and we did that tonight.”
On Brandon Ingram’s performance down the stretch:
“Yeah, he’s that guy for us. We all know that. We look to him, especially in crunch-time situations, to bring the win home for us.
That’s what he has done twice now, so we have the utmost confidence in him and love playing with him.”
