(On how he would describe the loss): “A good, old-fashioned butt whooping. Our team is just so soft mentally, it’s unbelievable. I think last night, winning that game we forget that we have to come in here and play a team that’s much better. I think our guys don’t understand that the team we beat the other night had 15 or 16 wins. This team we played tonight is fighting for something, and they came out and they played like it. We were just on our heels the whole night, with no resistance defensively. Even the first three or four minutes of the game, we didn’t follow our defensive game plan. Guys didn’t have any focus on what we were doing, and it trickled down from one guy to the last guy. We got exactly what we deserved.” (On the Trail Blazers strong start to the game taking the will out of his team): “It probably did. They got off to a great start, but they were just really aggressive. Like I said, we were on our heels. We’re backing up almost like we were scared to try to attack them. They just came out with an aggressive mindset from the start of the game. That’s how a lot of the teams that we’re going to be playing the last 15 game of the season… they’re fighting for something. A lot of teams are going to come out with that same mentality.” (On getting one assist from the starters): “When I came in at halftime I said ‘We have one assist as a team.’ And I said ‘I’ve never seen that before. Never in my life.’ So it was just a bad night all the way around, obviously. We didn’t play well, they played really well. But again, I think they were just much more aggressive, much more physical and they took the fight to us, and we didn’t react really well to it.”
BARON DAVIS
(On the outcome of the game): “They came out and they jumped on us, and they were hungry. They were hungry. They saw blood and they just never stopped. It was like we weren’t there. By the time we figured out we were there, we were down 30 or 40 points.” (On how you re-group after a game like this): “A loss like this, you just have to let it go. The effort and the energy is what you have to correct before you correct anything else. We didn’t have the effort and we didn’t have the energy that they had. We were doomed from the first quarter, because you saw it was hard for us to really get anything going.” (On how you feel after a loss like this one): “I think it’s a learning process. It’s definitely, definitely disappointing. A lot of teams lose… you go through tough losses like this, blow-out losses like that and hopefully we can re-group and put everything in perspective and just play with a little bit more passion and more energy to start the games, and let that be our guiding light.”
HEAD COACH NATE McMILLAN
(On The Game): “I thought they were professional about their approach. We wanted to use this game to continue to work, to get better and work on some things. The defense was really good. The pressure was good on the ball. We wanted to, since putting Wallace in the starting lineup, we wanted to look to extend our defense and trap a little bit and had an opportunity to work on that. Offensively, we didn’t get too sloppy, good execution, and good ball movement. It’s always good to knock down shots.” (On getting a win like this at this stage of the season): “I think for us, we need one. We really haven’t had a lot of games like this where from start to finish stayed focused, wasn’t trying to embarrass Cleveland or anything like that, just work on our game and try to get better. We know we’re going to need to get better and we had a game plan, I thought the guys went out and executed it tonight.” (On 29 assists): “Good ball movement, we’re knocking down shots, but I thought it started from the defensive end of the floor. We got ourselves in the game with pressure. Traps were good, forced some turnovers, and everybody shared the ball.” (On take-aways from the win): “Stay focused, stay focused. Our approach – don’t play Cleveland’s record, this is a game. We need to stay focused and played a good game tonight. Philly is coming in next. They’ve beaten us I think four out of five times. They’re playing well, a back to back with the Lakers. So we need to work on our rhythm, getting our rhythm, and trying to keep that rhythm. So yeah, good game, good win, and now we get prepared for Philly.”
LAMARCUS ALDRIDGE
(On the game): “We came out, played with energy, came out with the focus to put them away early. They were on a back-to-back so we had energy, came out strong, and got a big lead early.” (On defense): “We just tried to play good D. We felt last game against Dallas, our defense really wasn’t that good. We ended up winning the game but they shot 66 percent or something like that, so we didn’t feel good about that. So the whole purpose tonight was defense, and our defense made easy offense. (Are games like this must-win?): “Every game is a must win, but when a team is on a back-to-back and we had the upper hand like that, we should win these games like this.”
BRANDON ROY
(On The Game): “That was a really, really good game for us. We’ve got a lot of battles coming up and we needed a good game like that to come out and dominate early and not have to fight so hard in the fourth quarter of the game.” (On take-aways from win): “We take the win first. We’re in a tight race. I thought our defense was really good the first half of that game. I thought we were really scrapping, helping out. So we just take that effort and now we’ve got to turn the page again. Turn the page on each win and try to get another one.” (On the game): “I thought the first half was good because the starting lineup came out and really did a good job and I thought the guys came in off the bench and did a good job of keeping the lead and trying to extend it. In the past, we haven’t had both lineups come in and play well in the first half. I thought both did that tonight, so that was good. Then in the second half, we just let guys play and we were able to just keep the lead and get out of there with no injuries.”