Feb. 20, 2009 at Minneapolis
Pacers 112, Timberwolves 105
PACERS COACH JIM O'BRIEN
"This gave us our fourth win in the last eight games. It's always nice to get on the road and get a win. I'm very happy with our play for three-and-a-half quarters."
"We stopped guarding the drives. We had done a good job of stopping the ball from being penetrated for three-and-a-half quarters, but when the other team is putting the ball in the basket and scoring 36 in the quarter, it's tough to get your tempo. So we just didn't guard the last six minutes."
"(We) use our passing game, run the ball and reverse the ball. We don't have a lot of set plays. We just got a lot of good movement, terrific unselfishness, and shot 48 percent as a result of it... It's not necessarily that we don't pound the ball inside. The only legitimate low post guy we have is Roy Hibbert and he only played 16 minutes. We get a lot of inside stuff from our passing game with penetration."
"(Daniels) played well, but got tired though. When you've been out that long with a bad back, it's tough to condition. But he played well, hit a big shot when they got it to four, so that was good. He played a good game."
"We did a good job of challenging shots. (Foye) took some bad 'threes' that happened to go in. That's just the way it is."
PACERS GUARD JARRETT JACK
"We felt like we kind of gave one away in Charlotte the other day. We had an opportunity to come in here and possibly get on a winning streak, and we wanted to get this game back and go back home on a good note."
"I think that's what this offense is designed for. Everybody is able to get a feel for the ball, and guys take advantage of opportunities... I think we have to. There are ample opportunities for guys to step up in place of Danny being down and Mike being out. Marquis had a tremendous game for us, and I think Brandon Rush also came in and gave us some great minutes with Travis Diener, Maceo Baston and Rasho Nesterovic. It was a total team effort."
PACERS GUARD TRAVIS DIENER
"It feels good. It was a total team effort. From start to finish, we played well tonight. We let them come back a bit in the fourth quarter, but we made enough plays. This was a big win for us without Danny, Mike and Jeff."
"I think that's the way to play with them (available). You always have to play unselfish, move the ball and pass the ball. I think that's when we're at our best. When we start standing and watching is when we're not very successful offensively. I thought we did a great job moving the ball tonight."
PACERS GUARD T.J. FORD
"We hadn't had a road win in a while. We definitely needed this one and we came here and we got it... We hadn't had one of those shooting sprees in a while. It was good to make shots and now we need to win two in a row."
"Their superstar is out and so is ours, so I guess you could say it's even matched. We needed this win and we came and got it, so now we have to go home and take care of business."
PACERS FORWARD MARQUIS DANIELS
"My back is really bothering me, so it's just a matter of that getting better and just getting out there and getting comfortable again... It's still tight, but overall it's getting better and starting to come around the corner."
"You need to win games and everybody has to step up with guys being down."
TIMBERWOLVES COACH KEVIN McHALE
"Too many turnovers and too many missed free throws sums it up. We had 19 turnovers and they had 25 points off of them. We missed 18 free throws -- very unusual, we're a good free throw shooting team -- so I don't know. It was like we couldn't get anything going. When we did in the fourth quarter, we put a run on them but... it was like we couldn't get energized on the defensive end, couldn't get stops to run out on them. When we did run out, we had some turnovers in break situations, where I thought we had some opportunities to score on the break pretty easily and we kind of found a way to not score or miss it. We had two or three in the first half where we just threw the ball up the sideline and the guy was cutting to the basket and it was just turnovers. We had some bizarre turnovers."
"We didn't energize ourselves on the defensive end, which we've got to do, and I don't know if you get to the line and you stand out there and you split them, you miss two and you split them. I don't know if guys just started getting kind of... Every time we seemed to get something going, we'd have a turnover or two that hurt us, but we just can't. We're not going to win with 19 turnovers in a game. The free throws don't bother me. Like I said, we're a good free throwing shooting team, we'll make free throws. The turnovers are what really got us. We weren't able to establish the paint defensively. I thought Jason Collins did a good job when he was in there as far as holding down the paint, but other than that they were stepping in on us, getting point-blank shots and stuff. It was an odd game. We never really got anything going the whole night... Every time you kind of thought, okay, we're going to get something going, some crazy stuff would happen."
"You can't have that. Heck, Miami was two nights ago, and we had yesterday. I guess you can find a reason for everything, but I'd have to search pretty hard to find a reason for missing that many free throws and some of the decisions we made. That was uncharacteristic of our guys. Last game we had 21 turnovers and won, but you just can't have that many turnovers. You're just not going to win games with that many turnovers. It's hard to do. We take care of the ball, have 12 or 13 turnovers and shoot a decent percentage from the free throw line and the game is ours. But we didn't do it, and those are things you have to do."
"When (Love) meets the guy early and he bumps him and he hits him... Granted, I would say him playing Roy Hibbert doesn't bother me. Now if you're telling me it's Shaq, then that's a different thing. You're not going to play the paint at all if you're going to allow guys to catch the ball at three feet. You've got to hit them early, you've got to get them out of there, you've got to wedge them out, you've got to get them away from the basket. And it wasn't just Kevin. Everybody out there, all of our bigs except for Jason got stepped in on at point-blank range. Now one or two a guy, that's eight points. I'd like to have those eight points back right now."
"Love had three fouls, and I thought, he's going to pick up his fourth and I probably should have played him more. He only got 21 minutes anyway, so I thought he already had three fouls, so I figured you let Jason establish a little more of a physical presence, which he did. I thought Jason kind of got things anchored in down there, and then we bring Kevin off the bench."
TIMBERWOLVES GUARD RANDY FOYE
"We didn't control the paint. They got too many points in the paint. We didn't get to start or finish the way we wanted to. We wanted to start by getting out and running, but they pretty much controlled the game the whole time."
"They took a lot of jump shots and that's their game. They put pressure on us to go up and down the court and that's not our game. As a group, without Al we can play like that, but we tried to keep up with them and it hurt us."
"I tried to take shots that came to me. When I saw the score getting out of control I tried to take over a little bit, but it was too late."
TIMBERWOLVES FORWARD RYAN GOMES
"We came out flat and they built a big lead. We fought back, but it wasn't enough. Like I said to one of the reporters in Washington, if you look at 90 percent of the games where teams are down like that and they fight so hard to come back, it just doesn't happen. But the main factors of the game were turnovers and free throws. It pretty much just went in the other team's favor and we just need to go back to practice and go shoot extra free throws."
"The main thing is we didn't take care of the ball and we're playing a different style where we need to make more passes and make that big play. We have to go ahead and get the ball up the floor a little earlier, each and every one of us, and trust that the next guy can make something happen. Sometimes you're so aggressive and you slide under the hoop, take charges and those are our turnovers. It's a little different in that aspect, but we have the Lakers on Sunday and we know they're going to play their game and try to dominate over top of us, play smart and play uptempo."