Pelicans Head Coach Monty Williams
On the game
“We did not come ready to play. That is my responsibility but it is also the responsibility of our team especially the leaders of our team. Our starting unit was collectively not ready to go tonight. Tyreke [Evans] gave us a lot of juice but outside of that, we didn’t have much of anything tonight from our starting unit. We could blame it on foul trouble or the referees, but I thought they just physically pushed us around tonight and we just didn’t respond.”
Responding to the Clippers energy
“We tried. We always do that. I thought Austin [Rivers] came in, it gave us some juice, Greg [Stiemsma] was pretty good. When they pick up fouls like that it takes his rhythm away. Our bench was better but we couldn’t throw it in the ocean. We shot 32 percent tonight, we missed I don’t know how many layups we missed tonight. We were 24 for 53 in the paint. We have a tough time winning games if you can’t just score around basket.”
Team frustration
“Guys were frustrated obviously. The way we’ve lost, the last second plays and this is the worse lost we’ve had this year. So the character in the locker room is going to have to respond as oppose to just talking about.”
Pelicans Guard Austin Rivers
Overall thoughts on tonight’s game
“We just have to keep our heads up, just keep moving forward. I think we just got to hold each other accountable and just keep pushing each other. It’s never fun to lose like that. I think stuff like this has to hurt; it has to bother you. This can’t just be another game for us, like alright we’ve got another game in a couple days, I mean this has to stop. I don’t mind losing when you put everything out there but it’s a bad feeling when you lose and you just feel like your team didn’t give their best. That’s how I felt like it was tonight. I felt like we could have been a bit better.”
Pelicans Forward Tyreke Evans
Overall thought’s on tonight’s game
“It’s tough man. They come out from the beginning, they hit us hard and we weren’t ready to play in the beginning. I say that they came out because [Chris] Paul pushed the ball and got it to Blake [Griffin]. I mean they were hitting ahead to their power forwards and that’s not good. We’ve got to get back and do a better job on that. It’s a tough loss for us but we’ve got to sit down. It’s going to hurt a few but we got to get back and be ready to play against that.”