KINGS HEAD COACH DAVE JOERGER: “Well we got an emotional, bounce back win. We got some great performances but as a team is really where its at. Each guy really competed and displayed great toughness getting loose balls. We were playing against one of the top two or three rebounding teams in the league and we did a great job of hustling down and checking out guys and other guys coming down to get rebounds. As you see all 10 guys who played got a defensive rebound which is what we needed. We got a shot in the arm.” ON MATCHING UP AGAINST THE TRAIL BLAZERS BACKCOURT “A lot of times its guard on guard and a lot of pick-and-rolls and Willie Cauley-Stein and Kosta Koufos navigated a lot of pick and rolls and our guards fought. Its not always going to work out great because they can make you look real bad. Obviously we play them again tomorrow but we fought like crazy.” ON THE ENERGY JUMP AFTER THE LAST LOSS “It’s good. You know that stuff isn’t fun but there were lessons learned. You try to take something out of each win and each loss. There are times that you’re going to get an emotional response. Its difficult to do throughout the course of the year to say ‘Can you play that way every single night?’ You can try but with that level of emotion tied into it can be difficult over the course of 82 games. The effort is the part that is willing to be physical and stick your nose in there and get hit or give hits. That is carving out a place in the league.”
KINGS GUARD De’AARON FOX: ON DEFENSIVE EFFORT “It’s a point of emphasis for us. We know we are going to have to defend, especially if we’re struggling scoring. It was just energy today. We started off really strong. Damian [Lillard] and CJ [McCollum] did what they do but we really brought some energy.” ON BIGS DEFENDING TONIGHT “We knew coming in that Damian and CJ would use pick-and-roll and our bigs, like Willie [Cauley-Stein] had a hell of a game defensively and offensively. We know what Kosta [Koufos] is going to bring. He is definitely going to be that defensive anchor and they really covered up screens and they can really move.” ON PLAYING WITH GEORGE HILL IN THE BACKCOURT “We can both attack and he’s a great shooter so that really helps me. He’s a mentor on the court. It’s a lot easier to play with him then to watch him play. It was great tonight.” ON LESSONS FROM THE PREVIOUS LOSS TO ATLANTA “Just how to bounce back. That game they did whatever they wanted and defensively we were just really bad. Today, we didn’t practice so we all just talked and sat down and knew that we had to bring a different type of energy defensively and I feel like that’s what we did.”
BLAZERS HEAD COACH TERRY STOTTS: ON HIS INTENT WITH PUTTING JAKE LAYMAN AND MEYERS LEONARD IN, IN THE SECOND QUARTER “Jake at the end of the first quarter…he hadn’t played….get him some minutes in the first half. Meyers went in because Ed [Davis] had tweaked his ankle and just needed to make sure he got re-taped and make sure he was ok.” ON WHAT DISAPPOINTS HIM MOST ABOUT TONIGHT’S GAME “It’s tough winning on the road. Sacramento played extremely hard. They played with desperation defensively. They were aggressive. We didn’t handle that very well. You got to give them credit. It’s hard to win a game shooting 37 percent. There are a lot of areas we could have played better, offensively and defensively.” ON TRYING TO FIND LINEUPS THAT FIT AND WORK “Well, I don’t know. Second half, Ed [Davis] and [Jusuf Nurkic] worked together to combat their two bigs. Noah [Vonleh] had gotten a long run. So, it was just a struggle to score most of the night, no matter what it was. They did a nice job of trapping Damian [Lillard] and CJ [McCollum] on pick-and-rolls. We need to get a little bit more movement into the pick-and-roll and we weren’t able to do that.” ON THERE BEING NO FAST BREAKS TONIGHT “No, again they got back. We didn’t push it as much. I guess that’s part of our identity, is that we’re not a fast break team. As much as we try and push it, for whatever reason, those fast break points aren’t there for us.”
TRAIL BLAZERS GUARD DAMAN LILLARD: ON WHAT THEM GETTING OUT-HUSTLED IN TWO OF THE LAST FOUR GAMES MEANS ABOUT THIS TEAM “I think when you say out-hustle, it looks like [other teams] are playing harder than we are. But they’ve had that little bit of extra [energy] more times than we had and I just think we didn’t have it [tonight]. [The Kings] had it a little more than we did. Instead of us making sure we got rebounds, it seemed like they had that extra bounce and they went after it. Those 50-50 situations, it seemed like they had a number of them and we just had a few of them.” ON THE TEAM BEING KNOWN AS ONE THAT USUALLY OUT-HUSTLES OPPONENTS “Yeah, I mean we’re playing hard. I think it’s just when certain situations present themselves and it’s going to change the tide or momentum of the game, those are the ones we have to have. One of them came late. The ball came off the rim, I peeked at my man and I assumed that [Shabazz Napier] was going to get it, but he timed his jump early and I let the ball get over my head and they got another possession and I think they scored on that possession. So, just stuff like that, they didn’t care if somebody looked like they had it already, they just went after it and ended up with another possession. There were too many situations like that.” ON THE OFFENSE 15 GAMES INTO THE SEASON STILL NOT BEING THERE “Still a little slow, yeah. I’m not sure – I’m really not sure. I think this is new, we haven’t had a good rhythm and flow to our offense and it might sound crazy, but I’m really not concerned. It doesn’t concern me because we’ve always been a good offensive team and it changes us improving on the defensive end. I just have faith that the offense is going to come around. We haven’t just had bad offensive games every game, we’ve had some good offensive games it just hasn’t been consistent. But we haven’t been very consistent as far as playing a complete game yet this season either so that goes along with it.” ON WHAT THEY NEED TO DO TO GET THE GAME AGAINST THE KINGS TOMORROW “We’ve got to tighten up. Once again, I don’t think it was a bad showing. When you’re in a position like that where you have an opportunity to be going home 9-6 playing against them on our home floor with a chance to be 10-6 going into this road trip, in our minds we have to take ourselves to that next level. We have to come in here and get this done and we just didn’t get it done [tonight].
TRAIL BLAZERS GUARD CJ McCOLLUM: ON TONIGHT’S GAME “They took it to us. They outplayed us – beat us to loose balls, forced turnovers, got into us defensively. What’d we score, 80 points tonight? [You’re] not going to win to many games scoring 80 points. ON TURNOVERS BEING AN ISSUE OR THE KINGS PLAYING SOLID DEFENSE “I think a combination of both. They did a good job defensively denying us on certain plays, [calling out] echo, echo, command on a lot of our play calls. But we have to do a better job of getting open and then once we do get open we have to make better decisions.” ON IF THEY HAD GOOD LOOKS EVEN THOUGH THEY ONLY SCORED 82 AND SHOT 37 PERCENT “I think a combination. We have to knock down open shots, finish in transition. I had four turnovers, a couple turnovers I shouldn’t have had. Overall, we just have to do a better job.”
Kings Postgame Notes Portland Trail Blazers (8-7) vs. Sacramento Kings (4-11) The Sacramento Kings earn their third win in-a-row at home and break a three-game losing streak as they defeated the Portland Trail Blazers, 86-82. The Kings and Trail Blazers play again Saturday night in Portland. After giving up 126 points at Atlanta, the Kings held the Trail Blazers to 82 points on 30-made field goals. The 82 points are a season-low for a Kings’ opponent. It is also a season-low in points in a game for the Trail Blazers who had a previous season-low of 85 points vs. Toronto on Oct. 30. The Kings also held the Trail Blazers to 41 points scored in each half, tying the opponent season-low in scoring. Sacramento is now 2-1 when holding an opponent to under .400 percent shooting. From the :42.1 mark at end of the first quarter until the 7:45 mark of the second quarter, the Kings went on a 14-1 run in which the Trail Blazers shot 0-11 in that stretch. Sacramento held a 29-21 lead which was their largest lead of the game. In his first game in a reserve role, Willie Cauley-Stein scored a season-high 22 points on 9-of-17 shooting and grabbed a game-high 10 rebounds for his first double-double since the second game of the season at Dallas on 10/20. Of his 22 points, Cauley-Stein scored 13 points in the fourth quarter alone on 5-of-8 shooting. Willie led all bench scorers and helped the Kings’ bench to outscore the Trail Blazers’ bench 46-22. It is the 11th time this season that the Kings’ bench has scored at least 40 points. Sacramento is 2-9 in such games. The bench also tallied 12 of the Kings’ 20 team assists. Damian Lillard led all scorers with 29 points on 9-of-25 shooting, while CJ McCollum chipped in 19 points going 8-of-15 from the field. Aside from the pair, no other Trail Blazer scored more than seven points. Each team shot below 29 percent on 3s in tonight’s game for the first time since the 12/18/15 when the Chicago Bulls and Detroit Pistons shot 22.7 and 27.6 percent respectively from 3. Since 1985, Sacramento has only played in two games where both teams shot that low of a percentage from beyond the arc, winning both games.
