Pelicans Head Coach Alvin Gentry
On what bothered him most about tonight’s loss:
“They played better than we did. They deserved to win. That’s the bottom line. It doesn’t matter what did bother me or didn’t bother me. The bottom line is that they played better than we did. They didn’t stop playing. We tried to explain that they play that way. They just did it in Cleveland. They just did it in Golden State. They play forty-eight minutes. They continue to play. The end result is what happened.”
On what, statistically, caused the loss:
“They outplayed us in every phase of the game. They outplayed us. They just kept playing and they played for the forty-eight minutes. They got it into overtime and they outplayed us.”
Pelicans Center DeMarcus Cousins
On how the Kings closed out the game:
“I don’t think we had a sense of urgency the entire night. We just kind of coasted through this game and we gave this team life. We had plenty of opportunities to put the game away and we just wouldn’t put our foot on the pedal full-throttle. With that being said, they kicked our ass."
On the last few minutes of the 4th quarter:
“Like I said, there was no urgency. Just because we are playing a team with a bad record doesn’t mean we are automatically getting a win. We need to go out and compete every night. I don’t think we came out and competed tonight at all.”
On the team not playing up to their ability:
“It’s frustrating, but there is still a lot of season left. Even with this frustration, we cannot let one game affect the rest of our season. We have to continue to learn from our mistakes and better ourselves from these mistakes, and just learn from this. We have to come out and play with a sense of urgency every night, we have to come out and compete at a high level no matter if they are 2-20 or 20-2. This loss is on us tonight.
On taking that next step as a team against below .500 teams:
“If we want to be the team that we are talking about being, we have to come out and do it, and show it. We cannot just continue to talk about it. It shows tonight that we weren’t being the team we wanted to be. We have to come out and compete every night.”