HEAD COACH TERRY STOTTS “Well it was good to get a win, obviously. That’s an understatement. I thought we played very well in the first half offensively. We got off to a slow start in the second half. Our bench, CJ and Meyers really had an impact on the game. Even though Meyers didn’t score in the second half, his presence out there allowed a lot of penetration. CJ made some big shots. We kept competing. I was glad to get this one here in front of the fans and the crowd was great. This is what playoff basketball is about.” Have you noticed difference in Lillard at two home games? “I don’t think so. Damian is a competitor. We played two substandard games as a team in Memphis and coming home, feeding off the energy of the crowd, I thought everybody – but not really per se other than he’s pretty determined.” On contributions of Leonard, do you think you get a victory without him in the first half? “Probably not. He was terrific in the first half. HE made all of his shots, got some big rebounds and like I said, because he made shots, he was a threat and pulls their bigs away from the basket. The thing with Meyers is when he was able to provide defensively, it allows us to take advantage of it at the offensive end, so he was obviously a big spark in the first half.” What was the message to the team after the game? “I usually keep my comments pretty short after the game. It was a hell of an effort and all we have to worry about now is game five.” What did you notice about the team down 10 with 8:11 left in the game? “It was kind of a weird time because LA was sitting at the table, going back and forth, neither team was getting much done, Jeff Green hits a three that somebody was going to crack somewhere. Getting LA and Damian back in the game – it was one more time that we’ve come back from double digits so I don’t think it was anything unusual but certainly, there was a sense of urgency.” Did you see anything different from Memphis without Conley? “Well, I didn’t expect Calathes to hit four threes, but honestly, they run their offense regardless of who’s in the game. Dave does a good job of changing things up and running plays for different people. Gasol got his post ups, Randolph got his post ups, they ran their movement stuff. Beno and Calathes were aggressive taking shots when they were open which is what Conley would have done as well. Obviously they missed Conley, he’s a terrific player, but I think their offense kind of runs the same way with or without him.” DAMIAN LILLARD Did you feel different at these home games? “Obviously, we’ve, as a team, played more comfortable on our home floor. And just the adjustments, adjusting to the way that they’ve defended me, being consistent with my routines, with what I do on the floor and also just seeing the things I can do on film to help myself to make the game come easier. It’s simple, just stick to what I do, trust the process, trust my teammates and the coaches and be myself. It’s been working out better these past two games than it did in the first two. We just gave ourselves another chance to play. On timeouts and mentality late in game: “I think since the last game when we went down 0-3, the big thing that we’ve been talking about is having heart and playing with price and just not being swept. Everybody was saying people always say nobody’s ever done it coming back from 0-3 and we didn’t want to focus on that, we wanted to focus on just today, doing everything that we had to do to give ourselves a chance to keep playing. We did that, so in the huddles I just wanted to do my best job of keep reminding the team that hey, this is it, we’ve got to stay locked in, keep playing with energy, keep pushing the ball – just the things that we might not even recognize that we’re doing, just kind of bring it to the light consistently so we don’t forget what’s given us a chance in the game tonight.” CJ MCCOLLUM Is this the kind of game you’ve been waiting for? “Yeah definitely. I think the first two games I came out kind of shaky and played like a younger player, making mistakes and not making open shots. I just wanted to show my teammates that I could play in a big game and help them out. I was aggressive tonight trying to get to the cup. Dame did a good job of getting into the lane and kicking it out and I hit some big threes down the stretch.”
HEAD COACH DAVE JOERGER “A competitive game, hard fought by both teams. I’m proud of our guys. I thought we got off to a slow start, the first five or six minutes were good and then we relaxed. They played with a high sense of urgency tonight. They did a great job of getting in the paint. They had 30 points in the paint in the first half and that’s a problem for us, keeping the basketball in front of us at the point of attack. Second chance points, they had 22 tonight and that’s something we’ve done a better job of in game 3 and I thought a lot of it came off of rotations that we had to make to stop penetration so you end up with a guard trying to check out a big. They’ve got really good players and I think it’s crap that people are talking about they don’t have enough. They have more than enough. They’re a good team and they’re well coached and this is a great place to play. We enjoy coming up here, hopefully we don’t have to again, but it was a good game. “I thought the end of the third quarter was a big key for us. We came out with much higher sense of effort and energy in the third quarter, I think it was 80 to 70 at some point, we were 1 of our next 10 possessions and we just shot a ton, a ton of jump shots the first six minutes of the fourth quarter. They ran it back and made some shots. Hats off to them, they did a nice job tonight.” Up 10 with 8 minutes left, what went wrong? “We were just trying to buy a couple minutes because I ran Marc in the ground. Just trying to always have a go-to guy out there. Without Mike on the floor, we tried to feature Jeff Green and get him going. Tonight, the shots just didn’t fall for him.” On Lillard’s looks tonight: “He made a big three down the stretch that was a tough shot. He hasn’t hit a ton of those, but that one was very, very timely. I thought he did a good job of getting in the paint and he was aggressive. I thought the key tonight, as good as he was and he’s a heck of a player, we’ve got serious problems right now with CJ McCollum. He is getting to the rim, to the rim, to the rim on us over and over and over. He had another good game tonight and we have to do a better job of keeping in front of him.” MARC GASOL “On what happened at the end of the game: “We stopped competing. We tried to trade buckets with them and we played a little bit too fast, we did not execute as well as we should have. They took away the momentum that we built and got away with a win. Got to give them credit.”
Vastly superior head coach chalks his team's collapse to "shots" not falling for his players... ...he sounds as bad as Stotts.
Someone needs to point out to the coach that Blake and Afflalo passed the ball to Leonard for those scores. They didn't play the second half.
