COACH TERRY STOTTS
“Slow start, but one thing about our team is that we keep competing. As a coach, that’s all you want your team to do is keep competing. I thought we got good contributions from everybody who played. We keep finding ways to win and we get stops when we need them. We make big shots when we need them. New Orleans is a tough team to guard. Their record is deceiving. When Ryan Anderson – they were without Davis for a while, they were without Anderson for a while - now they have both those guys on the court. They’re a very potent offensive team with those three guys who can penetrate.”
On getting into transition game offensively:
“Well it coincides with getting stops. It’s more difficult to run when you’re taking the ball out of the net and their defense is set, so those go hand in hand. It’s like that for every team, you get stops, you get out and that’s how there are swings in the game. Both teams experienced that and it’s probably the team that gets more of them usually wins.”
On Lillard:
“Damian is Damian. He understands what needs to be done. He takes it upon himself when he needs to. He’s fearless taking the ball to the basket. He makes big shots, competes defensively. Damian kind of speaks for himself. It’s not like we should even be surprised by it anymore.”
“To me, there were a lot of ebb and flows to the game. We would make a little run and they would make a little run. Other than the first six minutes of the game when they scored 20 points in the first six minutes, I thought the game just kind of went back and forth. For us, basically we got back in the game when we held them to six points for the last six minutes of the first quarter. Then it was just kind of back and forth.”
DAMIAN LILLARD
Thoughts on 23-5 record going into Christmas:
“That’s great. I didn’t know that this would happen going in to Christmas, but it feels good, especially to get this last win going into the small Christmas break that we have. But it could be worse, so we’ve got to be thankful for how well we’ve done and keep working so we don’t fall from this.”
On Coach Stotts and success of plays coming out of timeouts:
“He’s watching the game. He’s a great coach, so he sees what’s working for us. He sees what’s giving the other team trouble. Coming out of those timeouts, he knows what to go to and it’s up to us to go out there and execute it.”
On importance of limiting turnovers tonight:
“It was important. If we had been out there turning the ball over while we weren’t shooting the ball well, it probably would have ended up as a loss tonight. It was good that we were able to take care of the ball and find a way to get it done. If we didn’t take care of the ball, we probably wouldn’t have won the game.”
On third quarter success:
“I think it’s urgency more than anything else. We get to come in here at halftime and we talk about adjustments and we look at the screen and we see the mistakes that we made. I think we’re smart enough basketball players to figure out in our mind what we need to do to change it. A lot of times we’re able to go out there and execute better.”
On winning close games lately:
“It feels great. We just had a long road trip and were able to get all of them except for one. We wanted to come back and protect home court. We were able to find a way to get it done again. So it’s exciting when you can keep winning these close games.”
Is this as good you’ve felt with your shot?
“It is. So far this season, I think this has been, over the past few games, my game overall has felt the best. It might be because I’m starting to get a few more naps in. Honestly, I always tell our staff and my teammates that I never take naps. Like, I just couldn’t do it. But lately, I’ve been taking naps. So I guess that might be the difference.”