Pelicans Head Coach Monty Williams
On the Suns taking away things they wanted to do offensively
“We just didn’t have our best stuff tonight. We committed 17 turnovers and we only got to the free-throw line 13 times – and that was in the second half. Obviously, you could complain about the whistles but that’s not going to get you anywhere. We didn’t make an effort to get to the basket. We fell in love with jump shots and didn’t finish around the basket. We had a number of opportunities around the basket where we didn’t finish. Our transition defense was not that great. You had two teams playing in an ugly game and they just scored more points in the second half. I think they had 59 points in the second half, which is a far cry from our defense – defensive output from the last two games.”
On the Suns’ run in the fourth quarter
“They hit some tough shots. A couple of those shots you’d be like ‘shoot ‘em.’ They banked in a shot and then Gerald Green hits a shot off a pump fake, pump fake, AD (Anthony Davis) goes by him and he jacks up a shot – what do you say? I thought from our standpoint, when we came down on offense when it was a one-point game or tied we just didn’t execute – or we turn the ball over and give them another possession. You can’t have 17 turnovers period, but especially on the road.”
Pelicans Forward Anthony Davis
On execution down the stretch
“You want to come back. We had a chance to win the game. We broke down defensively a little bit, a couple back doors, they made some tough shots. Gerald Green’s shot when the shot clock was running down, hit a three. Then they got that momentum going. The crowd got into it. It’s tough for us. We didn’t really have it going offensively. Guys were missing shots, layups, we didn’t really get to the line. But it’s early in the season. We’re going to come in tomorrow, figure it out and be ready to play next game."
Pelicans Guard Anthony Morrow
On the offensive struggles
“I think we played good defense and were grinding it out early in the game and throughout the game – down the stretch as well. Just recognizing that it’s one of those games when shots aren’t falling and we have to rely on our defense and that quit down the stretch. It got away from us at the end. They can score, they can make shots, they have a lot of guys that can shoot threes. I think at one point they had five guys in that could make threes. So we stuck with the game plan but that kind of got away from us at the end when they made some tough shots.”