Exclusive GAME# 4: PELICANS @ BLAZERS - OCTOBER 24, 2017 - TUESDAY, 7:00 (PDT), NBATV & NBCSNW - Quote Book

HEAD COACH TERRY STOTTS

“Well it seemed like it was a struggle most of the night. We had a couple nice runs here and there, but in a game that basically our defense won it for us, our offense struggled most of the night. We had a rough time getting it going, but we made plays when we needed to. I thought Ed Davis and Caleb gave us a nice spark of the bench, as did Pat. Obviously Dame struggled, but we ended up doing what we needed to do.”


On Lillard and McCollum having trouble penetrating:

“I don’t know, when Davis was in the game, they had some protection there, but I thought New Orleans did a good job of scrambling. They made it difficult to screen them on ball screens. Cousins did a good job of clogging up the paint but I thought more than anything, they played a small, active lineup for most of the night and they made it difficult for us.”


On production from the bench thus far:

“I think one of the positives after four games is we’ve had different guys have a game. If you go through each game, we’ve had different guys, whether a starter or a bench player, come in and contribute. That’s a sign of a good team that different guys come in and help you win games.”


How did you feel Leonard fared against Cousins?

“I thought he was okay for the time that he was in there. Look, Cousins had a great game. He did a lot of good things. He got to the basket, got to the free throw line, but I thought Ed, Meyers, Nurk, they all had their turn on him and you can’t look at a 39 and 13 and say anybody did a great job.”

 

DAMIAN LILLARD

“It was a tough offensive game for me shooting the ball. But you’re going to have nights like that in a long NBA season with a lot of attention being paid to you. I’m just happy that we was able to pull it out. Usually when you come off a good road trip, you come home to a disappointment. Even though I thought we could have done a lot of things a lot better, I was proud of what we did on the defensive end to actually pull out an ugly game. You never apologize for winning the game and we got that done.”


On bench contributing so far this season

“Definitely. I mean, you look at what Ed came in and brought – a double double off the bench. You look at what E.T. came in and brought. You look at Caleb coming in. We had so many guys we were able to count on. It’s not just been tonight, it was each game that we’ve played from the preseason up to now – guys have come in and we’ve been able to have faith that the game is going to be fine. When you’re actually doing that over the course of a game over periods of time, you see that you’re a deeper team. You’re not just looking on paper and saying, well this guy’s looking good and this guy is doing that, they’re actually going out there and helping us produce wins. So the longer that we can sustain that, we’ll be a better team.”


What was difference late in the game?

“We got stops. DeMarcus Cousins is a handful. Jrue Holiday is really crafty out there. They have so many options, guys that are aggressive and can go make something happen. We buckled down, we got stops, we rebounded. A few shots went in for us and we pulled it out.”


On Pelicans losing Anthony Davis early in the game:

“You hate to see anybody go down, especially one of the better players in the league. As a competitor you want a team to be at full strength. You don’t want to go in there and that happen to your team and not be at full strength. I think had he been out there, it would have just made it a better game. It would have forced us to be sharper. Not that we took it for granted, but it would have forced us to be sharper knowing that that guy was out there. But him not being out there obviously plays into our favor.”

 

HEAD COACH ALVIN GENTRY


Initial thoughts on the game:

“We battled, that’s all I can ask. I thought we played extremely hard. We got down 12 in the first half and then fought our way back, we were down 12 with six minutes to go in the game and then with two and a half [minutes] to go it was a one point game, it was a one possession game so you can’t fault any of that. We’ve just got to do a better job, obviously the offensive rebounding and the turnovers hurt us. Between our turnovers and the offensive rebounding they had 38 extra possessions and it’s hard to sustain any kind of flow or anything when you have that many turnovers and then you give up that many offensive rebounds.”


On Anthony Davis:

“Don’t know a whole lot, our trainers just said that the MRI came back negative and that’s all I know so I’m sure we’ll know more tomorrow.”


On if losing Anthony Davis changes the team:

“Well I mean it doesn’t matter who’s out there, we still got to battle, which our guys did. We’ve got to try and execute which for the most part we did but we had some careless turnovers. We also had some turnovers turn into the right thing. Listen, if we play that hard we’re going to be fine, we play that hard and that unselfishly, we’re going to be fine. We had some tough breaks, a couple of balls that could’ve gone in but just rolled around the basket and came out. For the most part I thought we followed the game plan, you can’t do a better job on Damian Lillard than what we did. He’s a guy that if you can hold him to 3-16 shooting, you’ve done as good a job as there ever will be done on him so I thought we were pretty good there. CJ [McCollum] hurt us a little bit but at the end of the night the offensive rebounding and our turnovers we the difference in the game.”


On if he knew when Davis got hurt:

“I really don’t know, I have not talked to him yet so I don’t know. It’s just speculation, some people said it was during warmups pregame yesterday, today, early in the game or whatever, I don’t really know that.”

 

CHEICK DIALLO

Obviously, this is a big game coming up. What are your thoughts going in and what do you think the environment will be like?

We’re just going in to win the game. That’s all I know. Everything else, we’ll leave outside.

You made a bunch of 3s in that second quarter to help regain the lead. What do you think of how you played as a team in that stretch?

We had to pick our energy up. They were beating us off the offensive glass rebounds. If we rebounded then we had a good chance, and that’s what we did. Started rebounding and we were able to get shots.

 

TEAM

• The Trail Blazers have won 17 consectuve home-openers, extending their NBA record (Boston-14, 1979-92) which began in the 2001-02 season.

• Portland outrebounded the Pelicans, 63-41. The Trail Blazers have outrebounded their opponent in all four games, and tonight’s 63 rebounds mark a single-game high for the NBA this season. Portland’s 18 offensive rebounds tied the NBA single-game high for this season (Indiana, San Antonio).

• The Trail Blazers are 3-1 through their first four games for the first time since the 2011-12 season.

• Portland’s reserves outscored their New Orleans counterparts, 43-30.

• The Trail Blazers outscored the Pelicans in the paint, 38-34, and beat them in second chance points, 24-7.​

 

PLAYER

• Damian Lillard’s second field goal of the game at the 7:01 mark of the fourth quarter was the 3,000th field goal of his career. Playing in his 400th career game, Lillard is the third-fastest Trail Blazer to reach 3,000 career field goals (Geoff Petrie, Sidney Wicks).

• Ed Davis (12 points, 10 rebounds) recorded the 50th double-double of his career and his first of the 2017-18 season. Davis leads current Trail Blazers in career double-doubles.

• CJ McCollum (23 points, 7-15 FG, 4-5 3-PT, 5-5 FT) has scored 77 points through his first three games. His previous high through three games was 68 in the 2015-16 season.

• Evan Turner (13 points, seven rebounds, four assists) has had at least 11 points, three assists and one three pointer in all four games this season.

• Caleb Swanigan’s eight rebounds were a season-high. Swanigan also contributed five points and three assists.​