Trail Blazers Head Coach Terry Stotts On big plays late in the game: “We had, I think, 27 second chance points. I thought (Jusuf) Nurkic came up with some big ones. We struggled all night to shoot the ball, but I was really proud of the way we just kept competing. It’s very frustrating when you’re not making good shots and still playing the defense you need to play.” On how he kept the team motivated throughout the game: “What I kept emphasizing was that we’re getting good shots. Just keep playing and making plays. It wasn’t about, ‘they can’t put us away’. It was just, ‘I think we’re close’. Even when we got down by 11, we had a couple minutes of good basketball to cut it back to seven. We knew we were just hanging around and waiting to break through.” Trail Blazers Guard Damian Lillard On conversation with Coach Stotts to start the 4th quarter: “We knew these two games were really important, and in the 3rd quarter we were just fighting and fighting, and I was like ‘We’ve got to roll’. I don’t want the game to change. I don’t want them to go on a run. I don’t want anything to be out of my control, and me not to have an impact on whatever happens. Sometimes when I do that, he will say ‘Damian, I’ve got to get you out.’ Tonight he trusted me. We have developed a relationship where I do not say it all of the time now, I will say it when I really feel that way. So our trust has really grown with that. On what this team has left to prove after another battle-tested win: “To sustain it. Obviously we had a win streak, but we were playing at a really high level for a long period of time. I don’t think we had a drop off against Houston, they just played like the best team in the league and they just beat us. Then against Boston, they may be short-handed but still a really good team and we dropped another one. I think in both of those games though, we played good basketball and it was just a play here or there that we didn’t make. We have been able to sustain this style of play so I think it shows our growth.” Trail Blazers Guard CJ McCollum On his increased role ahead with the news of Maurice Harkless needing surgery: “Same thing as always. I’ll come out and do what I need to do to help the team. It means more minutes for Pat (Connaughton) and more minutes for myself, and even the bench. Most importantly, defensively we will need to do the dirty work until he gets back.” On Damian Lillard’s night: “He did what he always did…just took over. What is most impressive is I don’t think he came out the whole second half and he pushed through. I’ve always said the best thing about him is his will. He is at a crazy, different level. He always steps up. It is unreal.”
Pelicans Head Coach Alvin Gentry On tonight’s loss: “I thought we played hard. I thought we competed at a high level. You can look at one stat that would be the difference in the game; the offensive rebounding. We gave up 28 points on the offensive rebounding. We hold a team to 41% shooting. Their best player has a good shooting night, but their second best player goes 3-for-19. In those situations, we come up with stop after stop after stop, but it doesn’t matter if we’re giving the ball back and they’re putting it back in the basket. Our defense was great. I mean they shot 41% with 28 second-chance points. We really did a great job, but we’ve got to find a way to come up with the basketball. Got to find a way to, when we get stops, to not have to then go back and play defense again.” On E’Twaun Moore’s two three-point attempts in the final seconds of the game: “Well I was trying to call a timeout, but to be honest with you, we’re not going to get two better looks than that. We got two wide open three point shots with the guy we want shooting so I think it was the right decision on their part to play on. We got a good look and then we got a great look and so if I do take a timeout, they have a chance to set their defense or whatever so I would take those two open shots.” Pelicans Guard Jrue Holiday: On the blocks at the very end: “(I) saw an opportunity. Obviously didn’t want them to score, so either it was going to be a block or a foul. So, I think, how he went up, I just kept my eyes on the ball and from there I got the block. So good stop, wish we would have got the score at the end.” On keeping the Blazers off the offensive glass: “It’s tough especially when AD (Anthony Davis) is trying to stop Dame (Damian Lillard) at the basket. (Jusuf) Nurkic is a big dude, so just for all of us to go back in there and try to box him out and get a rebound is tough.” Pelicans Forward Solomon Hill: On whether or not tonight felt like a playoff game: “It’s a close regular season game. We understand that when we play small with teams like that, we’ve got to rebound. I take it personally. I had a couple of opportunities with Al-Farouq (Aminu), guarding Al-Farouq. Him getting to sprint in there and getting a tip on a couple of balls or getting another possession for his team is huge. It’s what they did against OKC (Oklahoma City). They won at the end of the game against OKC because they got Dame a second shot. We’ve just got to do a better job of getting that done.” On the difference between a win and a loss tonight: “I just think offensive rebounding. I think that we gave up [28] points with offensive rebounds. You are talking about holding a team to low 40%. Whether Dame gets hot or not, I think we did our job defensively. We just have to make sure we take care of business on things we are used to doing. We know that they’re a top five offensive rebounding team and that’s what they are going to do. They are going to get up a lot of shots and it’s going to be a lot of long rebounds and give themselves second opportunities.”
