Pelicans Coach Monty Williams On what hurt you most tonight “Our starts in the first and third quarter were really bad. We didn’t get a lot of production from our starting group on both ends of the floor. If you look at the box score from those quarters, it was just the hole that we dug. Our second unit came in and gave us a lot of juice and effort. For whatever reason, maybe back-to-back, time of the season, I’m not sure, but we just didn’t have the same zip that we typically have. That happens but we have to fight it.”
On free throws hurting you “Yes, unreal. And big free throws. We have a chance to cut the lead and change the tone of the game, and sometimes we missed them both. We have to get back into the gym. We’ll take tomorrow off and have a really good workout before the Milwaukee game so we can get our rhythm back.”
Pelicans guard Brian Roberts Is it just a little funk you guys are going through not starting fast? “I don’t know what it is to really pinpoint. I think one thing we can look at is running our sets hard, that is what we have to do. Especially against veteran teams, physical teams that try to get into to you, try and disrupt your offence. That makes it more difficult to run your sets. The first and third we didn’t do well enough to put us in a good position and we just couldn’t get it down in the end.”
On a chance to rectify the situation in Milwaukee “That’s a big game the last one before break. We feel like we just let these two get away, we just didn’t play our best basically and we want to finish this trip with a win. We definitely have to play better against Milwaukee.”
Pelicans forward Anthony Davis Is playing with consistency the biggest challenge when you come back after the break? “It’s not even when we come back it's Wednesday night. We have to be ready to play from the beginning. Having these lapses in the first quarter, we fight back but we use all of our energy to fight back. We have to play aggressive from the beginning.”
On fighting back in the second and fourth quarters “We had some costly turnovers, bad shots and we can’t do that. Especially with a young team like we are, teams will take advantage of that. We can’t turn the ball over.”
Were turnovers the biggest factor? “It was one of them. We didn’t stop the ball, there were lot of things we didn’t do. Rebound, it’s a lot things. We have to come out and play with a lot more energy and effort than what we are doing right now.”