On the second half
“I thought the second half they played harder then we did. I thought they played a lot harder, it seemed like they wanted it more than we did. Their second unit was great; it was offensive rebounds after offensive rebounds, even when we got stops it seemed like they got another opportunity. Like I said before, we know they are an aggressive basketball team, I thought the first half we matched that and the second half I thought we were over matched.”
On the Jazz big men
“I mean you don’t change your game plan because those four left our big guys on an island sometimes. But you have to give them credit, their big guys are good and they are a good team.”
On the reception he got from the fans
“It surprised me a little bit. It was a little bit louder than I thought it was going to be. I’m glad (the fans) still have love for me here. I definitely still have love for everybody here. It was cool.”
On the second half against the Jazz
“I think we get a little stagnant in the third quarter. In the second half I think we depend too much on us trying to play one-on-one and trying to make the plays, which makes the game harder on ourselves, especially when we’re down. When we’re up, a lot of times they will make a run and you can withstand it and try to figure it out. When you’re down, you don’t have time to do that. It’s hard to do that on the road.”
On the second half against the Jazz
“I feel like when our guys want to get it going, we just don’t. We talk about it. When teams make shots, we just don’t respond. In the third quarter…I come down and start trying to be aggressive. I just try to mimic the first two quarters. Coming out, guys were setting screens and I’m just trying to make plays for my teammates. Coming out in that third and fourth quarter, we just get softer.”
On what the team needs to improve
“Just compete every single day and try to find a way just to put these wins together. Obviously we can play against any team; we’ve proven that on a night-to-night basis. It’s just figuring out what works for us and what doesn’t. It’s more or less timing and we’re a young team still trying to figure out what we need at certain points in the game.”
On the second half against the Jazz
“I just missed a couple of easy shots that I normally make. There were a couple of times that they ran plays where I knew I was supposed to be there and I didn’t get there. It’s more just frustrations with myself and not being in the right places and not doing the right thing.”
On what the team needs to improve
“We do it sometimes. We just need to do it for 48 minutes. We’re really good at being there a lot of the time, then we kind of fade off. We just need to make sure we find a way to get there for 48 minutes.”
On being able to run transition offense
“We talked about having fresh legs and we wanted to come out and demonstrate that. I thought the guys did a good job pushing the ball down the floor. The big guys did a good job of coming in and cleaning up the plays giving them an opportunity to get an early post up. But the pace for the most part was good. After we got our legs back under us I thought we did a good job.”
On Enes Kanter
“He is just big inside. He plays within who he is. He’s getting the ball in his spots. He’s getting a lot more patient and waiting to see what he has is one on one opportunities and he is finishing the play. And he is actually getting quicker in that once he goes to finish and not as much banging. He has shown a lot of growth in that area.”
On the play of the point guards and setting the tone early
“Pushing the ball, trying to take care of the ball and getting out in transition and getting our guys easy shots. Tonight I think both of us did a good job by taking care of the ball and getting our guys easy shots.”
On the adjustment in the third quarter that opened the game up
“We just needed a couple stops. Not one or two stops, we needed to get about three or four and not turn the ball over and push the tempo. Knowing that they’re the type of team to get hot we wanted to limit touches of certain guys and just make it tough on them.”
On the game after a long rest
“It was good, too much rest. One more day I would have thought it was summer vacation. It was good to get a couple days rest and come out and have fresh legs and now we got a couple more days but when we come back it’s go, go.”
On the defensive play tonight
“After a couple of days off that’s the one thing that can hurt you. You gotta get back into your flow and after the first half we kind of picked it up. Playing against a team that runs a lot of isolations, we knew that going into it, and we kind of locked down our defense a little bit better.”
On his play tonight
“I just went out there and tried to do my job. Coach gave me minutes and I just tried to do my best.”
On the transition game tonight
“We just played faster and ran. DeMarre, Gordon and Alec, and everybody was running and we had a lot of fast break points that way.”