Pelicans Head Coach Alvin Gentry:
On the “ugly win”:
“That one wasn’t beautiful. The last ten minutes of the game we did a great job at grinding and trying to find ways to get back in the game. I thought we had a lot of open shots we just didn’t make. I thought we did a good job with that. We just had so many open shots we didn’t make. I thought we kept grinding defensively and coming up with stops.”
On Justise Winslow’s dunk to go up 14 points in the 3rd quarter:
“I took a timeout and said that we are going to have to try to put a group out there that’s just going to scramble and create mismatches, just like they were trying to do for us. We were just going to play small and try to keep the floor spread, put pressure on them. When they double team AD, we have to move the ball and find open shots. I think that’s what we did. We really did miss some really great looks that we had, but we didn’t get discouraged. I thought we went back out and played even that much harder defensively to come up with shots where there wasn’t any more separation.”
On Anthony Davis’ 22 rebounds:
“The 22 rebounds were great for AD. I thought he had about 6 or 7 rebounds where he just went and got them. They were big time rebounds. He’s had as many 15-rebound games as anybody in the league this year. Obviously it’s something that he has done throughout the season. Tonight obviously we were small. I thought he did a much better job on the offensive boards tonight. It wasn’t so much the defensive rebounds because he’s always come up with those rebounds, but I thought tonight he got into the 20s because he had seven offensive rebounds that he just got.”
Pelicans Guard Langston Galloway:
On his mindset and finishing out the game:
“Just trying to stay ready. Whenever coach calls my number, just try to stay ready and just try to continue to encourage my teammates and do anything I need to do to help out.”
On Coach Gentry playing the hot hand:
“No I never really realize that in the game, I just go out there and do what I can and just play with a lot of effort and bring a lot of energy. Whatever happens down the stretch is whatever Coach’s call is.”
Pelicans Guard Jrue Holiday:
On Langston Galloway:
“He stays ready, bro. You can put your hat on it every day. He comes in and does the same thing and he stays ready. When he gets out there you’ve just got to look for him and if it’s going up it’s going to be good.”
On he and Anthony Davis taking over down the stretch:
“I think we just really wanted to win the game. I think I’m offensively kind of getting into the groove where I know at the end of the games I can take over and AD obviously has too.”
On playing with AD:
“Whiteside didn’t know what to do. He stopped me and Tyler Johnson had to try take AD on the backside and Langston was open. The next time down Whiteside went with AD and I had a wide open layup.”