 
DANNY GRANGERReached 30 points for the fifth time in the last six games, making 10-of-19 from the field and 6-of-7 from the 3-point line, adding seven assists and two blocked shots. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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The Pacers return home for two games, starting Wednesday in Conseco Fieldhouse against Allen Iverson, Rasheed Wallace and the Detroit Pistons (7 p.m., Fox Sports Indiana, 1070 The Fan).
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Jan. 12, 2009 at Salt Lake City
Jazz 120, Pacers 113
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(On the game) “I thought we played great defense. I thought our defense was absolutely outstanding in the second half. If a guy hits a lucky shot there’s nothing you can do about it but defensively we held them to 37 percent in the second half. We played with a great deal of passion defensively but it just didn’t end up on a positive end.”
(On the play of Mehmet Okur) “He had a great game, hats off to him. It’s tough to double-team somebody on the three-point line, it’s very hard to do that.
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(On the game) “We come out, we start well but so does the other team. We take too long to settle in, figure them out and decide we want to play defense. Then when it gets down to crunch time in the second half we decide we want to play defense a little bit. We try to dig in to do it, but it’s too little too late. You have things happen like tonight when there is a loose ball and Williams throws up a three and it goes in. We decide to play defense in the last minutes of the game. That stuff happens to you. It’s called karma.”
(On the pace of the game) “We wanted to come out tonight against this team and start out well. We did that offensively. It goes for both ends of the court. Defense we didn’t do that.”
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(On the game) “First half we were not existent. We picked it up a little bit more in the second half. It just wasn’t there. We took a little more pride in the second half than the first half. We let them get such a big league that we were fighting back the whole time. We just clearly ran out of time. That is basically the tale of the game.”
(On the lack of defense) “I think there has to be a commitment on our part. We need to commit to doing. We talk a lot and say we are going to do it. When it comes down to it we just don’t do it. We do it on occasion. That’s not going to win enough games. Once we get that commitment then we will be a lot better team.”
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(On the game) “First of all, I think we have to give them a lot of credit for the way they hung in the ballgame after they played last night. They had a tough game, and then to come in here and play us, and after we got them down they just kept playing. We had to make a couple shots to finish them off at the end of the ballgame, but for a team with the record they have, I thought they played as well as anybody we’ve seen.”
(On whether he was upset that they allowed the other team to shoot 50 percent) “I obviously want to win the ballgame, but those are mistakes, when you let the guy just drive to the basket, get on top of the basket. And it wasn’t happening with one guy.”
(On Mehmet Okur’s play tonight) “He’s shot like that before. It’s not like—maybe not quite that much—but he’s the kind of guy, he’s been shooting extremely well. Obviously, he showed that again tonight. You never know what’s going to happen, opportunities, how they defend, what they do to try to take it away from him, but he just, as you might say, let it rip. And he did, and it made a wonderful game for him.”
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(On his hot shooting performance) “I felt good. I felt like it was one of those nights for me. I wasn’t going to miss. You know, I felt my shot everything was going to fall for me, all shots in. My teammates did a good job and really created open shots for me and I felt good.”
(On Indiana’s defense ) “I took what they gave me, so I mean they gave me open shots and I took it.”
(On stepping up with Millsap out and the upcoming road trip) “Yeah I felt like I needed to step up and I think at the end Deron hit some big shots for us, A.K. did put backs a couple times. We just wanted to keep our streak going and before we go on the road we won four in a row. We’re going to go out there with a lot of confidence and try to win all three games on the road and come back.”
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(On the way he played tonight) “I felt pretty good, number one. I couldn’t make a shot from the beginning, kind of like five or six in a row. Even though that shot I was practicing with Jeff (Hornacek) a lot, but some games it doesn’t want to go in. I was trying to change the accent in the second half. Go inside a little bit more from the free-throw line. You see three or four shots at the end, right under the basket, right at the second we need it. I like that.”
(On the play of Okur) “We’re trying to find him (Memo) because when the guy’s (Memo) going on a streak like that you should use him as much as possible. This was a career high for him. One game I’ve seen of him, against Washington last year, he was making like every shot…He’s a good player. I’m playing with Memo every day in the practice and in the games, and I can see what he can do so it’s not surprising. He can make almost every shot.”
