HEAD COACH TERRY STOTTS “Well an understatement: that was quite a performance by Dame in those two minutes. We were battling the whole game and he came up big. I mean, he hit five threes in two minutes. You don’t see that very often. I liked the way we competed all game. We kept our composure when they made their runs. Even though the score doesn’t reflect it, I thought defensively we were aggressive and did a lot of good things. When we got down, we kept our composure and kept competing and found a way to win.” On win after tough losses this week: “The league is kind of funny. Just like our win against Cleveland, you don’t see it coming. That’s why you just keep competing. This was a rough week, no question, and we knew it was going to be a rough week. To come out with a good win against one of the top teams, I was happy for our guys because it’s tough. It’s tough going through a losing streak. I’m happy for the fans, I’m glad they got to see a good game. So it’s good news all around.” On McCollum’s three at end of third being a momentum play: “Certainly – I thought there were a lot of momentum plays. That was one of them. Chief’s dunk was a momentum play. Obviously Dame’s threes were momentum plays. Mason Plumlee had a nice play at the end on the block. There were a lot of momentum plays that either kept us in it or got us over.” On emotion of this team this season: “I would say it’s even keeled day to day. Certainly, I think we’re emotional during the game. It’s an emotional game and you need that but win or lose, we come back the next day and we don’t get too high or too low. I think games like this show that we can play with people and that’s encouraging, but you go through some tough losing streaks, one of the things I like about this group is they come to work every day. They enjoy being in the gym. They don’t walk out with their head down, every day is a new day.” DAMIAN LILLARD On last few minutes: “I mean, we gave ourselves a chance by the way we competed and how we defended. I knew I needed to get aggressive. They were blitzing my pick and rolls the entire game, they were just making it hard for me to turn the corner a lot of times. I just knew I needed to be more aggressive looking at the rim and trying to make plays, and I did that. I got some good looks at the rim and I let them fly. On itching to get the ball back when you’re hot like that: “It’s like that sometimes when you see the ball go in a few times and then the team is defending the way we defended and you just keep getting it back. You get a stop and you keep getting the ball back. I just wanted to ride it out and I was able to do it tonight. How good did it feel? “It felt good. I said last game that I felt really good body wise and running around out there, but we lost the game so it felt a lot better tonight to do it in a winning effort.” On breaking out of losing streak: “It just shows us what we’ve known all year –t hat we’ve got to be consistent on the defensive end, that we’ve got to play complete games. All year, we’ve had good stretches and then the next couple games, we’ll get away from doing what allows us to do things like we did tonight. We’ve just got to continue to do it and understand what type of opportunity it gives us when we defend for a full game.” MEYERS LEONDARD On Lillard’s performance late: “His ability to take over a game is incredible – obviously a very elite scorer, ability to get his shot off pretty much any time. But I will say this – it didn’t surprise me. We’ve all seen it before, we’ve seen big shots, we’ve seen him really be able to put the ball in the bucket in the fourth quarter, and especially – I don’t know if it was the last four or last three minutes tonight, but he certainly got it going.” On win: “It’s a huge win. We’ve had a rough week so to come out here tonight and get a win was big. To be able to get a win late in the fourth quarter like this, being down 6 or 7 under 2:30 or whatever it was, it was a big win for us.”
I get the Quote Book directly from the Blazers, I was laughing at how they spelled Leonard's name. Leon the Dard!
HEAD COACH BILLY DONOVAN On his team’s composure in the last couple minutes: “I thought our guys came out and really fought, considering we were down by 6 or 7 coming out of the half. We made some adjustments and some changes, pick and roll coverage on those two guys, we blitzed them and we trapped them and I thought it got us the lead. We tried to do some of that late, but we kind of went away from it a little bit, they weren’t in as many pick and rolls, and really it was just those guys going one on one, creating and making plays, and you’ve got to give those guys credit, they made some very difficult shots.” On his team’s play: “I think the one thing is that these guys want to win, they compete and they play hard. I think that sometimes there are guys that hold themselves to a very high standard, but I didn’t necessarily feel that way. I really thought we came out of the locker room at the start of the third quarter and played really well and battled all the way though, even to the fourth quarter, the game changed with maybe 3 minutes to go in the game. That’s when the game kind of changed. On his team’s transition defense: “The transition wasn’t really that big of a problem, I just mentioned it because I thought that was something we would need to do. I thought it was the second chance points, the offensive rebounding, which they hurt us there, they had 20. I thought the 3 point line was critical, they made 19, and the other thing for us was taking care of the basketball, and we turned it over 19 times. Those were kind of the three things we talked about going in to this game that we needed to do a good job on, and I think all three of areas we weren’t able to control them at all and that’s why we came up a little bit short.” KEVIN DURANT On the difficulty of rebounding with so many Blazers three pointers: “They had long rebounds and they’re going to the paint so it’s kind of hard because you don’t want to give up the pint but you don’t want to wait for the ball to come to the three point line because then you’ve got to jump. Everyone has to rebound off of jump shots.” On their 21-6 run in the third quarter: “We were running the pick and roll, we were going downhill and making shots. We had something going, we had 39 points in the third. We had 25 in the fourth which is still a lot of points but we’ve got to do better.” On their lack of offense late in the game: “We’ve got to watch film, I mean the game is going so fast that I can’t really tell you right now.” RUSSELL WESTBROOK On the Blazers’ hot shooting in the fourth quarter: “They made some tough shots, they made a few threes in a row, some tough ones.” On Damian Lillard’s game in the last two minutes: “He made some tough shots.” On any breakdowns of late Blazer plays: “I don’t know, some of them were defensive things that we should have done but a lot of those threes were six feet behind the line. They made some tough ones, we live with those but he (Damian Lillard) made a few and that happens sometimes.” On the defensive things they should have done better: “I don’t know, we have to look at it and see.” On the Blazers shooting 44 threes in the game: “That’s what they do. They shot 20 threes in the first half, shot a lot more in the second so we try to find what we can take out of their game and that’s what they do. They get them up and they’re going to make a few from time to time.”
