HEAD COACH TERRY STOTTS“Well, I was pleased with the way we played for the most part. Everybody scored. I thought everybody contributed. I thought we took it the right way, so it was good to get a win. It’s good to play well. We played a little bit of zone tonight so we had a chance to look at that.”
On rotation:“The only game that I’ve really done first team, second team was in Utah. The last three games, I’ve been mixing the players in . With Damian being out, obviously that affected things as well. The first half, played ten guys. I think it was similar to the last two games, but the fact that Damian was playing changed things up.”
On Lillard coming back from injury:“I was glad he made the couple shots in the second half and got it going. It seemed like he was maybe a little out of rhymth, but I thought defensively, he worked the ball and tried to keep it on the side in mid pick and rolls. The first half he didn’t really shoot the ball that well, but it was good to have him back.”
On turnovers:“We definitely wanted to cut down on our turnovers. We’d been averaging almost 21 going into this game, so turnovers – I want our team to stay aggressive, I want to push the ball, but we’ve got to make good decisions while we’re doing it. So that was a priority going into the game.”
Is it hard to draw conclusions from a game like this?“It is. Look, they’re undersized and obviously we’re and NBA team and the game went in our favor. But that being said, they played Washington to a very close game two nights ago and flew across country. So fatigue and all that played a part of it, so I don’t want to discount Haifa and them, but obviously it’s not like going up against an NBA team.”
On big men combinations and rotation:“I’d like to get a look at different combinations and at the same time, I want to get LA and Robin and Chris a significant amount of minutes to get a good run in. Getting the starters 24 minutes was one of the things I wanted to get done tonight, but getting Meyers and Joel and T-Rob out there with different combinations is something that I want to look at. I haven’t even had a chance to get to Dorell playing the four yet.”
DAMIAN LILLARDOn returning from injury“It felt good. I haven’t played in two games, so to get back out there with the team, get back in game shape, get some rhythm going, and compete – that’s what I was looking forward to and I’m happy I got the opportunity to do it.
How’d you feel?“I got tired pretty quick because I haven’t played in a game, but I felt pretty good and I caught my second wind. I just wanted to focus on being able to maintain that defense and over the course of a game because I haven’t played. I know that shots will fall, I wasn’t really concerned with that. I just wanted to make sure that I could play hard up and down and still be able to contain and come off ball screens and make plays and stuff like that and get comfortable.”
What can you take away from a game like this?“Discipline. We had a huge lead and it was important for us to make sure that we stuck to our defensive principles, not get undisciplined and start gambling and trying to get breakouts and taking shortcuts because we got a lot of stops, and offensively still execute, instead of just trying to break off because maybe we scored a little easier than usual. But just being disciplined. It helped us having to do that and stay solid.”
MACCABI HAIFA HEAD COACH RAMI HADAROn tonight's game..."Today was a tough experience. In some stages of the game, the structure fell a part. The physical and athletic advantage was a little too much for us tonight."
On the takeaways from tonight's game..."I think it's kind of a reality check in some way. On another hand, this is not our regular type of competition, but it was an interesting experience. I hope we will learn from it and gain something."
BRODY ANGLEY
On his experience playing an NBA team..."It was pretty cool. This level is the elite of the elite. We got a good example of what that is. Just a cool experience overall. You hear about those guys, watch them on TV, it was surreal to be on the same court as them."
On moving forward with the season..."Now that we faced that type of competition, which we probably won't see that in Israel, we can go back with a little bit of confidence. We were able to execute some things. Hopefully we can just build on that."