“The story doesn’t change, it’s on the defensive end; twelve good minutes. It’s as simple as that. Obviously we have to get more out of our bench then what we’re getting these first six games. I thought from the second quarter on we just played lackadaisical, 21 turnovers. Just real loose with the basketball and that team, I don’t know if we just thought they were going to stop playing or what but they just kept playing hard. We just never reacted after the first quarter.”
“I didn’t know I was going to take the last shot. It wasn’t a designed play. I just went and got it and attempted it. We just got lax and they started to make their run and started to turn the ball over. I definitely was fatigued going into the fourth quarter but there are no excuses. Dion got it going and I was trying to make shots but I couldn’t.”
“I don’t know. We just didn’t play smart. We had a big lead and we didn’t’ play smart. We turned the ball over and they got back in the game. We got another chance in the fourth quarter and we made a run but they played better at the end. They moved the ball better and they made shots and that’s why they won the game. We felt good during the game. The first quarter, the third quarter we felt really good but the last quarter, to me, we didn’t play smart. That’s why we lost the game.”
“I mean obviously it was a much needed win. I just thought our guys hung in there. They’re a really good team. That young backcourt, like I said earlier, I think they are as good as any backcourt in the NBA. You see what (Dion) Waiters can do and the way Kyrie (Irving) controls the game. Just the way he controls the game makes it really, really tough. They have a great backcourt but we just started the game off and we were so bad early as far as turning the ball over.”
“In this league you really have to play all 48 minutes. I mean we’ve been there where we’re up 14 then all of the sudden we’re down 16. My whole thing was don’t have long faces. Everyone has to lift each other up and truly believe that we can do this. That we can chip away, chip away, chip away and maybe find a way to win in the last three minutes.”
“We just got to do that in the first half. We definitely can’t dig ourselves holes like this because we are definitely not going to be able to get out of all of them. You know it is definitely a good test for us early, but now that we know what we have to do, we have to go out and we have to jump on it from the start."
“We just got a bunch of guys that don’t want to lose. We know what are mistakes are and we have to go out and we corrected them in the second half but like I said we have to do that in the beginning. Guys never gave up, kept fighting every possession until the last second ran off the clock. We got up, we played defense, we ran our offense, executed, knocked down shots, and we played together as a team on both ends.”
“Obviously we didn’t start the game the best way. It was probably the worst basketball first quarter of my career; I’ve never seen anything like that. Not being able to score and giving up 25, 30 points in a span of eight minutes. Wins like that are definitely going to build chemistry with the team, and that’s great. A lot of people feel good about the game now. We build our spirit. We are happy that we won this game but obviously we have to work on everything again and make sure that we never have to come back from minus 20 again."
“I should have had four more if I just had slightly better timing and a little bit more wind in my body. The last three minutes I gave up about two or three layups and everyone was upset. So on the fourth and fifth times I went way harder and I’m happy I actually hit the ball because if I didn’t hit the ball I would break someone’s arm probably because I swing so hard."