(On tonight’s game): “Obviously you don’t want to lose a game to anybody, especially at home. I have to give my guys a lot of credit. (I) issued a challenge to them about five games ago about continuing to come out here, compete and play hard and they’ve done just that every game since then. I give them a lot of credit for fighting and battling the way they did tonight and in the previous four games. We ran into a very good basketball team and we battled them tooth and nail all the way to the end.”
(On the second unit): “They’ve been playing well. It seems like if they have a little bit of an off quarter (they come back strong). If it’s the second quarter, they come back strong in the fourth quarter. First of all, they have a lot of pride in what they’re doing right now. We’ve been putting in extra time as far as making sure they understand offensively what we want and they’ve been doing a good job of focusing in on those aspects of the game and they’ve allowed us to be in all these games that we’ve been in. Again, they come in with the energy and the effort that we’ve talked about. We just have to keep it up. That’s our goal: to continue to compete this way the rest of the season.”
(On Lester Hudson): “He had some great shots, made some mistakes on both ends of the floor. That’s the one thing we talked about. We have to keep improving on some of those areas. You can’t take away the guy’s courage. He’s not afraid to take big shots and be in that moment. Tonight was another example of it.”
(On Hudson): “The one thing you know about him in a short period of time is (that) he’s been through the ringer as far as being in this league and being out of this league and being back in this league. So I think he’s trying to make sure that he gets an opportunity where he can stay here for a while.”
(On what the difference was in OT): “I told this to my coaches at the two-minute mark of overtime, I think we just ran out of gas. That’s no excuse. I just looked at my guys and I think we ran out of gas. We just didn’t have anything left in the tank.”
(On if the game-tying play was executed the way it was drawn up): “It was drawn up that way but it was supposed to be a little bit closer in. Lester kind of fumbled the ball, which kind of took away the timing, but he was still able to get to the basket. It was made for him to be able to get to the basket or throw it to A.P., who was in the corner, or back up to A.J., depending on what they did defensively.”
(On taking a playoff team into overtime): “It was a tough loss. It would have been good to get a win today, but they’re a great team. We play them again, so we’ll look to get a win then, but I feel like we should have won today.”
(On if the team ran out of gas in overtime): “I wasn’t thinking like that. I was trying to win. Maybe some of the guys did. (Indiana) started locking in and started to pick up their game and that’s why they’re number three in the East right now. They’re a good team.”
(On taking the last shot in regulation): “I was just waiting on what the defense gave me. I played off of what they gave me and saw the lane open up. My teammates and coaches were telling me to stay aggressive and it’ll come to you.”
(On tonight’s loss): “We worked so hard. It’s tough to give 100-percent effort and to come up short. It’ll take a toll on you a little bit, but we play them again next Friday. We’ll watch what we did wrong and what we did right and try to capitalize on it.”
(On if the team ran out of gas in overtime): “We fought hard. The coaching staff and my teammates all fought hard, but we just came up a little bit short tonight. Next time, we expect to win.”
PACERS HEAD COACH FRANK VOGEL
(On the game): “Very big win for our club against a team that’s playing good basketball at home. Byron Scott’s doing a great job. No matter who was in uniform, (they) played good, solid basketball. I give (Byron Scott) credit. I thought David West’s composure and physicality enabled us to get through (Cleveland’s) run in the fourth quarter when they built up a lead. Obviously, Danny Granger took over in the overtime period with five big points and an assist for a three (pointer). We set a goal at the beginning of the season to be at least over .500 on the road. This was our 17th road win, so we accomplished that goal. We have two road wins we still want to get, but we’re over .500, so (we can) check that off the list.”
(On George Hill): “He made some huge plays. He’s down on himself because he missed a free throw late in the game, but I told him he’s the reason we got the lead back. He made some big plays on the defensive end all night. In our side pick-and-roll game, (Cleveland) wasn’t stopping the ball, they were concerned about David West. (George Hill) was able to turn the corner and get to the rim and make some plays for us. He was big.”
DAVID WEST
(On how well the Cavaliers played): “It didn’t surprise us. They’re playing really hard. At the close of the third quarter and fourth quarters, they were very aggressive and got us on our heels. They really put us on our heels where we had to scrape and fight to get into overtime.”
(On the Pacers’ physicality): “I just thought we were a little bit more aggressive and fought some of those (post entry) catches. We just made them get a little bit uncomfortable…They’re a good group of guys, in terms of their effort. We know (Antawn) Jamison can play. I thought we were just on our heels. We responded and were able to get into overtime.”
ROY HIBBERT
(On Indiana’s game plan for the overtime period): “We just wanted to make sure we contested every shot, got every rebound and made everything tough for them. We wanted to make sure we executed on the offensive end and limit (Cleveland) to one shot, and a tough shot at that. In the timeout (Coach Vogel told us) he wanted us to get the first basket and get the first transition bucket. Those were the things we wanted to check off on our list.”
(On his game): “As much as I scored in the paint, I don’t think I had a good shooting night tonight. But I wanted to make sure I passed the ball to open people and find people. That was my job. I wanted to rebound and protect the paint. I did a pretty decent job of that.”