Pelicans Head Coach Alvin Gentry: On tonight’s win: “I thought we played extremely hard. I thought we did a really good job of following the game plan. I told the guys that I remember a game where they (Russell Westbrook and Kevin Durant) had seventy-six points and lost. I just kind of made that up though (laughter). They’re two great players, but we felt like if we could try to do a decent job on them and then try to keep the other guys out of the game that we could still have an opportunity to win and I thought that we did a great job with that. They made some really difficult shots. Even the last shot that KD made. We played them exactly like we told Norris (Cole) to play him and he just jumped up and shot it, but on the other side of it, I thought we did a good job of moving the ball. I thought we did a good job of finding open guys. We had twenty-nine assists. Anytime we get to that number right there, we play pretty good basketball and we always have an opportunity to win. I was proud of the guys. I thought AD (Anthony Davis) played well. Toney (Douglas) came in and gave us great minutes. Ryan (Anderson) came in, obviously one of the leading scorers in the NBA off the bench, and gave us exactly what we needed so it’s a good win against a real, real quality team for us.”
On converting a tough loss into a great performance in the next game: “I think that’s the league. You can use Golden State as an example. They go to Portland and lose by thirty or whatever it is which when you can count your losses on one hand it doesn’t meant that much, but then they come back the next night and go down to LA and win. I think in this league, the players’ mentality is, ‘That one’s in the past. Who do we play next? Who’s the next person in front of our schedule?’ And they approach that game as if nothing has happened because you can’t really do anything about it. That’s one of the things that we preach. We preach next play, next game. So although we didn’t play well in Washington, I thought our guys came back and got themselves organized and did a really good job.”
On Anthony Davis: “I think he’s playing great basketball. The unfortunate thing for him is that our team, we’re not winning enough games that people are talking about it, but he’s had a fantastic year. I thought he made some plays for us down the stretch. Had a huge block when we needed it most. Although we gave up a ton of points, defensively, I did think that we had a good defensive game against a really, really good offensive team.”
Pelicans Forward Ryan Anderson: On tonight’s team effort contributing to the win: “It’s not a surprise with this group; we’ve done it before. If we consistently move the ball like that when we have a ton of energy, and move the tempo, that’s what coach has been stressing all year. Fast paced offense, and when we do it, we’re really hard to guard. It’s fun, everybody’s involved, and we’re moving the ball, finding the open man, so it’s just a different vibe when we play like that. It was a fun game tonight, fun basketball.”
On how tonight’s win felt: “It feels great, any win at this point we’re going to be happy about, and we’re going to move on to the next game and do the same thing. You can’t really look in the past anymore, we’ve had our reasons and excuses, but you can’t really look in the past. You have to look ahead and right now we’re three-and-one since the break and that’s great for us. We have to keep up that momentum and keep playing the way we have been playing.”
Pelicans Guard Jrue Holiday: On if it’s tough to stay in the game after so many fouls: “You have games like that but you have to stay locked in. I talked to Kendrick (Perkins) and he always says to stay locked in, so that’s what I did.”
On how tonight’s win felt: “It was a big win, obviously because it was against a really good team. I do think that coming out of the break we had two good wins especially the one in Detroit. The game in DC, we just had to wash away and come back better today.”
