Pelicans Coach Alvin Gentry on Tuesday's game:
“You know, they’re a great basketball team. They’re the world champs and they got off to a great start. I thought we did a good job of really fighting our way back into the game. At one point we even got ahead by a point, I think, but then we did a very poor job of rebounding. We gave up way, way, way too many offensive rebounds. This is not a team that you can give up second shots to. They are such a threat and usually when you give them a second shot, it’s to a wide-open guy standing at the three-point line. So I thought that really hurt us and then again, we just didn’t have any rhythm to our offense. We picked up a guy that played, I don’t know how many minutes Ish (Smith) played, but we pick him up, he went through one walkthrough and that was it, so we didn’t have a lot of rhythm to our offense. I thought he did a great job. I thought we competed, just did a very poor job on the offensive boards. So we just have to get better in that department and move ahead. Like I told the guys, we’re not going to use injuries as an excuse. We have five guys that we can put out there, we’ve got to play hard and compete like crazy and then whatever happens from there, we’ll deal with that. We’ve got to get better in the rebound department. I thought we did a good job really in transition. I thought for the most part we did a good job. Some of those shots that Steph (Curry) made, it doesn’t matter who is out there. That’s who he is, but then we’ve got to get back and get ourselves regrouped and make sure that we’re picking up and talking defensively. We had a couple of bad possessions where we did not talk defensively.”
On Anthony Davis' performance:
“It was just one of those games and I told him we don’t worry about it. I thought maybe he took a couple of tough shots, but you know, that’s who he is for us. So he’s going to take the same amount of shots tomorrow night, I guarantee you. So it’s just one of those things that he didn’t make some shots that he’s very capable of making and they were on top of him quite a bit, but we’ll get it all figured out.”
Pelicans forward Anthony Davis:
“We didn’t make our shots. We all had good looks and we had all the shots we wanted. We missed shots that we normally make. We held them to 42 percent which is not bad but we gave them too many offensive rebounds where they could kick it out for threes or get and-ones and layups. That makes it tough for us.”
On Ish Smith's performance:
“He did an amazing job. He pushed the ball up the floor, scored and defended. For him only being here a couple of days and able to produce like that is huge. We are going to need that from him until we all get back out there.”
On the Warriors' defensive strategy:
“I knew the attention would be on me and I just have to find out a way to score the ball and get my teammates involved. It is tough when nobody is making shots because they don’t really have to guard their man. We will put tonight behind us. We have 81 games left and one tomorrow. We will be ready to play.”
On moving forward:
“We know what we can do on both ends of the floor; we just have to do it. We can’t do it in spurts; we have to do it for the whole 48. That is where we struggled but we will keep working on it.”
Pelicans guard Ish Smith:
“We didn’t get the win. That is the biggest thing. For me, I am still trying to find chemistry, when I should shoot the ball and when I shouldn’t. Sometimes I was reluctant when I should have shot and sometimes probably should have passed when I shot it. I am still trying to figure out everybody. That’s a good team but we still held them to 42 percent and they had 27 offensive rebounds and that really hurt us. We are heading to Portland for a back-to-back. We just have to stay with it and we will get it. For me though, I’m exhausted but it was a good start.”
On if he knew any of the team's offense:
“I was probably just playing ball 80 percent of the time but that will come with time.”
On his shooting touch:
“It felt better and looked better. I was a little frustrated because I shot tired free throws that were a little bit short.”