What They Said!! Grizzlies at Pistons 12-09-15

MEMPHIS GRIZZLIES HEAD COACH DAVE JOERGER:

On game:

“Good win; haven’t been playing great. I thought our defensive effort tonight was pretty good.  We got after people.  We kind of shot ourselves in the foot and that’s what I told the guys.  To play defense through what we did to ourselves with the turnovers and the missed free throws, that’s just a heck of a defensive effort for us against a team that, has given us problems with Reggie Jackson getting in the paint.  I didn’t like the way that the first half ended. We were sitting there with a 43-38 lead, they go out and run out a 9-0 run to finish, when I thought we played a pretty good half and so that was tough. But we battled, we battled and played from behind the whole game after that.  The play that we had called if they missed was to dribble three times and shoot it with four seconds on the clock from half court and end the game, so we executed very well.”

 

On calling a timeout on Barnes’ shot:

“If he put the ball down, I didn’t want to call a timeout because then you can’t advance it, but you can if you take two time outs and it’s one of those things where for what we’re going through, this is something that can change things going forward.  Just the crazy bounces of the game, that’s the crazy bounces of the game right there.”

 

On overcoming the double digit lead and the team showing a lot of fight:

“There has been situations with our team where we’ve gotten dinged a couple times this year by 25 or 30, so for us to hang in there, hang on, keep battling that’s a really big deal for us right now.  We didn’t let go of the rope, didn’t need to, still had a lot of game left and we kept battling, we found a good groove out there.  We came out a little soft defensively, I thought in the third quarter and we came around in a tough place to play on the back to back.”

 

MEMPHIS GRIZZLIES FORWARD MATT BARNES:

On his game winning shot vs. Pistons:

“It’s good.  We had a tough game last night, Oklahoma City beat us down, and to come back and bounce back tonight when we didn’t have our best effort the whole game.  We turned it up in the fourth quarter and I hit a crazy, lucky halfcourt shot to win it.”

 

On his thought process:

“I knew the ball bounced long almost to the free throw line and I knew I was ahead of a lot of people, I think just Reggie Jackson was ahead of me.  I wasn’t really sure what the time was but he (Jackson) gave me enough space to get a clean look, and I shot it.”

 

MEMPHIS GRIZZLIES CENTER MARC GASOL:

On defense in the fourth quarter:

“The good thing about shooting free throws at the end is the shot clock stops, the clock stops.  Especially when you’re playing from behind that’s what you want, and you have better time to save your defense.  When they run they put all the pressure, pick-and-roll and Andre (Drummond) running, it opens up the shooters.  Sometimes you get lucky and you make a shot like that and win the game.”

 

On Matt Barnes:

“Matt has been great;  I hope he continues to play that way.  Obviously he’s not going to make game winners every night, but he’s making winning plays, a lot of them consistently.  That’s what we need.”

 

DETROIT PISTONS HEAD COACH STAN VAN GUNDY:

On the loss:

“The last shot, that one you can handle. I mean, what are you going to do? He took the shot way too early, from way too far, and the thing went in. But when you give up nine offensive rebounds in the fourth quarter and you don’t execute down the stretch, and you don’t even run your last play through to the last option, then those things are going to happen to you. You don’t give yourself a chance to win so, it’s not just that shot. We didn’t do our job down the stretch.

 

On the last play meaning Marcus Morris:

“We didn’t finish the play, we broke it off. It’s the second time. We did the same thing against Washington and it’s inexcusable to not be able to come in, off a time out and get the play ran. And if it doesn’t work, it doesn’t work, but like I told them, I don’t know if it will work, we haven’t run either one of them.”

 

DETROIT PISTONS GUARD REGGIE JACKSON:

On tonight’s loss:

“It’s the toughest loss all season”

 

On opportunities to put Memphis away earlier in the game:

“I feel like it was a good basketball game.  They found a way to battle back; just the unimaginable, unexplainable happened at the end.”

 

On Memphis’ strategy to stay in games:

“They try to play a slow paced game and keep it low scoring”