What They Said!! Grizzlies at Nets 02-10-16

On tonight’s game:

“It’s a good win for us. The guys played hard. You never know how things are going to come out, last game of the season, last game before the All-Star break, first game of the season, first game back from the All- Star break. The ball started going in for us, and it started creating a nice feeling for everybody. Some of the things that go unnoticed were I think Tony Allen did a great job on Joe Johnson. I thought Zach Randolph did a pretty good job on Brook Lopez for giving up the height disadvantage. He just tried to stay between him and the basket. We made some shots, the ball got moving around. Any time you make shots that’s a nice deal. It was just a really good feeling. It hasn’t been a fun 36 hours for us with the news about Marc Gasol. Like I said before the game, it kind of set in today. Yesterday was shock, and today it set in. Now I can go on break, get some physical rest, some mental rest and have a plan for what we’re going to do.”

On the reverse dunk:

“I don’t know, it just happened – just playing within the moment and it worked out. It could have been bad.”

On the Nets closing their practice facility in New Jersey and moving to Brooklyn:

“I heard it was an unbelievable facility, so it’s just changing of the guard. New look, new scene, so it makes sense; but for guys that played there, that was home, and now home is here (Brooklyn). Especially for the guys that have been in Jersey for so long and staff members, I know it will be a special time to be in Brooklyn, working right here.”

On whether it’s weird to play the Brooklyn Nets as opposed to the New Jersey Nets:

“No. It’s all relative. It is what it is.”

On people posting all his old dunks online:

“It’s actually pretty cool. Maybe that was the motivation for tonight, so whoever posted it, I thank them.”

On what it’s going to be like this weekend in Toronto:

“It’s going to be bonkers. It’s a great city. I think they’ll be a great host and I think guys are going to have a lot of fun. It’s going to be cold.”

On what the fan base in Toronto is like now:

“Well, I haven’t been there since I left. Other than playing there, I couldn’t tell you, other than what I see on TV, but what you see on TV and actually being there is totally different. I think with the team, first of all, putting two All-Stars in the All-Star Game is big. Consistently winning, getting to the playoffs, that’s what it’s all about now, and I think – I mean, I watched – what do they call it? Jurassic Park – that little area right there. I wish they had that when I was playing. I just remembered it when we were playing, we battled against the Knicks, and then of course, just how loud and how crazy the crowd was then, so I know it’s bonkers now.”

On whether he’s going to the All-Star Game this weekend:

“No. Daughter comes first. She’s an athlete. She has her own tennis tournament this weekend, so can’t miss that. That won’t go well.”

“Without Marc on both ends, we knew we had to play different. We had to play a little bit quicker. Guys had to be confident in taking shots, maybe a little bit earlier in the shot clock, but as long as the ball is moving, I thought we did well on the defensive end to where we got out into transition for some easy layups, easy buckets. And if we play that way and continue to get better at it, you know we’ll have a chance.”

On how the team will move forward without Gasol:

“Well, we know what we got to do, you know, fill his void by committee. You know, we don’t have one guy that is going to sub in and be Marc Gasol, and we need to continue to grow, continue to learn how to play a different style, learn how to play together with different lineups and figure it out quicker than, you know, trying to take two or three weeks to figure out our identity.”

On if what unfolded in the third quarter was a result of them trying to pick up the pace of play:

“Yes, you know, third quarter, Coach got onto us at halftime – just saying, ‘if we’re going to win this game, we got to get stops and we need to get out and run and get some easy baskets.’ And that’s what we did. We got stops and that led to some easy ones, and we were knocking down the outside shot, which definitely helped.”

On what changed in the third quarter to allow Memphis’ run:

“I don’t know. We didn’t come out ready to play that third quarter. We got back in the game even though we had whatever turnovers at halftime. We were five points down, so I thought if we came out with some type of force and some type of energy we might’ve had a chance to stay in this game. But Memphis is a veteran-laden team. They know how to play. They’re a playoff team, so it’s not their first rodeo. They got on the run early and we had nothing to combat that. They played well.”

On what about the Grizzlies’ defensive pressure caused so many turnovers for the Nets:

“Just looking at the game from where I was standing and not really seeing the film, I don’t think it was so much of their pressure that caused the turnovers and caused us to get out of our stuff. I just think that we fell backwards in regards to getting set up to make a catch or make a pass into the post and just the little things of the game that sometime hurts you if you’re not focused enough on it. You find yourself in difficult situations, which we did tonight. They’re a great defensive team, but I think we helped them a little bit by some of our decisions.”

On Joe Johnson not having a field goal for the first time in 937 consecutive games:

“Yeah, that’s sad. He’s a great pro. Obviously it wasn’t his best night. We were trying to do some things to start the third quarter. We were trying to get him involved in the game a little bit. He had some opportunities but came up short. So, unfortunately, I hate to be the one to break that record but I wish I could have gotten him some more touches.”

On some of the things he feels the team needs to work on when they return from the All-Star break:

“Well, look, I mean, we still have our challenges. I still want to play the way we’re playing most nights. To play with that pace I think is awfully good for us when we do it and we do it the right way. Obviously, defensively we have to still continue to work. There’s no way you can put together a number of wins if you don’t play on both ends. It’s nice when the offense is flowing really good and then we backtrack on defense, so I’d like to see if we can put together a complete game playing in a right way and in the second half that’s kind of what we will be striving for regardless of who’s here and who’s not. Think it’s just something we want to play a more entertaining basketball and we’re kind of getting in that over the last few games, but obviously tonight was a setback.”

On what shifted in the third quarter:

“They shot the ball well. We couldn’t really get anything going the other way. That was obviously going to lead to the disparity and we didn’t do a good job of taking care of the ball. I had a lot of unforced turnovers, especially in the first quarter, that put us in a bad position from the [start]. It kind of effected our general feeling from that starting point. I definitely feel I was responsible for a lot of that.”

On if it was something individually wrong on offense or the Grizzlies’ defense playing well:

“They made some good plays, but I thought the general amount of them were definitely unforced. It’s not the way we want to play, obviously.”

On the Grizzlies shooting a lot of wide open shots:

“We talked about it before the game. Those are kind of warm-up shots that guys can’t have. Once [Jeff Green] starts making a couple, hitting one from deep and hitting that fade away shot as the shot clock expired, those are the tough ones. You can’t allow guys like that to get in a rhythm, it just makes it more difficult.”

On how much he will reflect on the first half during the All-Star break:

“You definitely want to reflect a little bit. You want to learn what you did in the first half, but obviously you want to come in fresh and ready to go with a positive attitude (in the second half).”

On how the game got so out of hand at the end:

“They hit three big shots that just kind of put us out of the game. I think Mike Conley hit two threes and they got a layup or something like that from Z-Bo (Zach Randolph) or somebody else and by that time we were down 11 or 12. It was just rough to try to come back and overcome that. They’re a tough team to play. There are a lot of guys on the team that can score the basketball. They’re a solid veteran team. They know how to play well with each other and they know how to get into their mismatches and how to get into their schemes and their coverages.”

On how disheartening it was to see JaMychal Green open on so many shots:

“I mean, sometimes it happens that way. Sometimes you’re helping out too much and a guy gets open, but he was knocking them down tonight. He was doing what he was supposed to do. When you see an open shot, you take it.”

On what he wants to see in the second half of the year:

“Us not giving up. Us just coming out here and just playing and remaining focused on each and every game and taking it game-by-game and day-by-day. We’re going to clear our minds on this break and hopefully we can come back and we can win some basketball games.”

On whether he thinks the roster will look similar to this after the trade deadline:

“I can’t really comment on that. I’m not sure. You never know what can happen around trade deadlines and around these types of situations. You just have to prepare for each and every thing that comes.”