What They Said! Warriors vs Grizzlies 11-11-15

Grizzlies Head Coach Dave Joerger

On the game:

“Good game. I thought we played really, really hard. I thought we battled. I thought we believed we could win. I still believe that we can win and we will down the line if we keep playing this hard. We struggled shooting the basketball. I think outside of Tony (Allen) we were 4-for-31 from our ones, twos and threes. We certainly had a tough night. That puts your defense on the run. Our points per possession defensively to hold that team under 100 points per possession-wise it’s not scientific right now, but it looks like it’s 98 (percent). So we did a fantastic job. Turnovers absolutely tortured us. We had stretches in the game where we got eight and nine stops in a row and just couldn’t capitalize at the other end of the floor. We couldn’t get enough scores. From that standpoint it was tough.”

On the season:

“I love that we are playing really, really hard and now we have to play better. Defensively we can do a better job. We have to stay disciplined especially against this team. We have a lot of history with this team lately. You do, you get crazy about running around for threes. Then you have to react to the basketball being driven in the lane. Then we kind of chased our tail at times. They had five different guys hit three point shots. That’s what they do. That’s how they are built. We got 40 shots in the paint. We are 16-for-40 in the paint. It’s tough. We have to knock some shots down. So there is no fear of playing anybody out on the perimeter.”

Grizzlies Guard Tony Allen

On the level of frustration:

“We’re frustrated, but we’re confident at the same time. I know we can pull things together. But looking at the standings, and being down under that red line, it should frustrate you. It should hurt inside, because we know we’re better than that.”

On adjustment needs: 

“Big Spain (Marc Gasol) called it out as soon as we walked in the locker room. It’s just our lack of communication on the defensive end, and two things I know for certain, are that we get our notoriety on the defensive end and we play hard for 48 minutes. Not three quarters, not half of a game, not the first quarter. We play hard for 48 minutes, and I can’t sit here and say that as a group, collectively, that we did that. We’ve showed spurts of it, but we’ve got to continue to do that for 48 minutes.”

On not having much margin for error in the Western Conference:

“He (Marc Gasol), being our vocal leader, hit it right on the head. We’re not communicating on the defensive end, which allows teams to run it right back at us. It kind of discourages us offensively. We’re a team that gets in the passing lane and make teams a little sluggish. I thought we did that in the first half and through the third quarter. But those guys managed to stick with what they do well, move the ball, and we missed a few assignments. They were able to get the lead, and we weren’t able to recover.”

Grizzlies Center Marc Gasol

On the law of averages means the team will shoot better soon:

“Yeah, you can wait on that. We have too many mistakes, defensively. There are times when we don’t run back, or have miscommunications. For us to win our style of basketball, there’s got to be continuous effort and discipline for 48 minutes. The style of basketball that we play, you cannot just take a couple defensive possessions off, because you have four other guys counting on you. You have to run back every time, you have to box out every time, help every time. If just one of us doesn’t do those things, you get scored on.”

On if they played hard tonight:

“If we didn’t play hard, I would explode. We have to play hard, it’s our job. If we didn’t play hard, that would not be acceptable. But only playing hard doesn’t win games in this league, especially in the conference we’re in, playing hard is not enough. You have to play hard, play disciplined, play together and you’ve got to help each other. We’re not that good. We’ve said that for many years. We’re not good enough to just have one player take over games. We’ve got to make each other’s jobs easier, and right now we’re not doing that.”

 

Warriors Interim Head Coach Luke Walton

On managing Stephen Curry’s late game minutes:

“He was good. It’s always tough, especially on a back-to-back. You don’t want to overplay anyone. But Steph is just so dangerous all the time that it’s tough to take him out at the end of the quarter because at the end of the quarter there’s such momentum shifts from one team or the other, so it’s always a debate to go on. We’re obviously happy we stuck with him at the end of the third for this one. He was magnificent.”

On controlling the pace:

“It shows again what great players we have. We’ve proved we can win in different ways. Obviously we don’t like to play with 23 turnovers and only 22 assists. That’s not who we are. We had guys in foul trouble. We had to get random, weird lineups going on out there. But, it is not easy to win in this building and all that said and all that happened in that game, for our guys to still come out and be able to get a double-digit victory just speaks to how much they enjoy playing, how much they enjoy competing, and how much they enjoy winning.”

On playing small:

“We’re great. It’s a part of what I was talking about. We have such a deep bench and our guys are always pulling for each other and ready to step in for one another. They did a great job of it tonight. I think we had Harrison (Barnes) playing in center position for awhile and Andre (Iguodala) at the four. It doesn’t matter who we have out there. Our guys get after it.”

On Andre Iguodala’s shooting:

“It’s an added dimension. Him and Draymond (Green) are in the same boat with that. They do so much for our team to win that they could go 0-for-whatever and still help the team win. When they’re out there shooting and knocking down threes, it just makes us that much more difficult to beat.”

On Stephen Curry’s third quarter buzzer-beater:

“It looked good. He did it here in the playoffs a few months ago from even further back. But from our angle on that side of the court, we had a great angle, and it just looked good the whole time and I was happy.”

On talk of winning 72 games:

“We don’t talk about it. Steve (Kerr) set the tone last year, we break down the season week by week and we look at the games that we have and what we need to get done for that week only. And we let kind of stuff add up on top of it, but the season’s too long to be talking about 72 wins or what we need to do. Right now we are thrilled with our win tonight, we feel like we can play a lot better, but now we’re just going to get some food and hop on a plane and get ready for Minnesota. But whatever happens in the future is going to happen. We’re just worried about taking care of the present right now.”

 

Warriors Guard Stephen Curry

 On having a deep bench:

“A lot of heart. For HB (Harrison Barnes) to do what he needs to do on the offensive end, but then have to knuckle down and guard Z-Bo (Zach Randolph), guard Marc (Gasol), guard (JaMychal) Green—he was all over the place. We’re versatile and everybody knows that each game is going to be different and you got to be able to step up and do what’s asked of you.”

On controlling the tempo of the game:

“On offense, they obviously have their style. We defended it really well and they shot a low percentage. Tough calls got them to the free throw line a lot, but defensively they were really hands on, is the best way to describe it. We missed some easy ones and we really had to work for shots that we normally make. They tried to keep us out on the perimeter and contest shots and things like that. We had spurts where we moved the ball well and got open looks and obviously turned some stops into some fast break points.”

 

Warriors Forward Draymond Green

 On having a 9-0 record:

“We really just want to win every game. With that I guess comes a 9-0 start, but we don’t go into the season walking around saying we got to tie that team that went 9-0, or tomorrow we got to break the record that started 9-0. We just want to win as many games as we possibly can.”

On the Grizzlies:

“They played inspired. Not that they didn’t the last game, we just really put it all together in a great way last time. They game out. They muddied the game up tonight. They made it that type of ballgame. I think it was kind of that one run that we went on in the third quarter that did it.”

On players coming off the bench:

“Guys are willing to do whatever it takes. You got some teams where guys will look at you crazy if you try to put them at center or small forward. On our team, nobody cares. I think Shaun (Livingston) was at the four. Nobody cares, though. It is what it is. Whatever we got to do to win, we’re going to do that. That’s part of the reason we’re successful.”