Postgame Quotes - April 9, 2012

On what you say to your team after a game like this: “It’s very embarrassing. We’ve got to figure out which group we want to be. Do we want to be the group that was 4-20? Or do we want to be the group that went near .500 basketball. It’s humiliating. It’s unacceptable.”

On whether effort was their biggest issue: “No, I think it’s all related. I think it’s everything; mentally, physically prepared to compete in an NBA game. You’ve just got to give Orlando credit. Just think about how easily they moved the ball, they screened bodies, did everything hard. We took the path of least resistance. Just very, very discouraged. But we have a decision to make as a group, how we want to go forward. This is where characters revealed – team character, individual character. This is where you make your statement of who you are as an individual and as a group. So we’ll see and then you have to consider the whole body of work when you evaluate everything.”

Is that what you told the team in the locker room? “The essence. Bottom line is there’s a fork in the road and you’ve got to make a decision. Do you want to be the group that started the season or do you want to be the group that played the next couple of months in the season? So we’ll see, because it’s the whole body of work. You just can’t pick and choose.”

On being more down about this loss: “I’m a miserable person to be around whenever we lose. The fact is 4-20 is part of the process of getting to wherever the heck our record was after that. But then, I see us reverting back. I see us taking steps backwards and that’s frustrating. We’re all a part of it. You can’t absolve yourself , starting with me. We’ve got to figure out which group we want to be.”

On whether he’s surprised by the loss because he felt they were past their 4-20 start: “Over the course of time everything is always revealed. Hopefully I believe in the character of the group, and hopefully we’ll respond, but we truly do have a decision to make. We’re in that gray area. Obviously we’re not mathematically eliminated, but the playoffs are a long shot, yet we’re playing teams that are playing very, very hard. I believe in our group. I believe we’ll make the right decisions, but we have to do it.”

“We put that 4-20 start behind us and we have been playing good basketball ever since then. The past two games we have let our guard down and kind of forgotten what got us to the point that we were playing good basketball. It has been two bad games and we have to bounce back.”

“I didn’t expect it (coming into game), but that is life sometimes. You get things thrown at you that you don’t expect. I went out there and played as hard as I can and tried to make the most out of my minutes.”

“It felt good being out there and playing basketball again. Being in a game again felt good. I took the shots that I had to take.”

“It has been a long time waiting. It has been a hard and frustrating past couple of months…from the injury…to getting back into shape…to not being able to play. It has been very frustrating but that is basketball. At the same time it is a humbling experience too. I think this has been a terrible year for me as far as not being on the court. Sometimes you have to hit rock bottom in order to bring yourself back up. That is the mentality I am taking.”

“At the end of the day we have to be professionals and go out there and do our job. Regardless of the circumstances, or whether we are a playoff team or not, we have to do our job.”

(on whether he thinks he will be with Pistons next year) “I can’t worry about things that I cannot control. I am just going to finish out the next couple games and if Coach calls my name, I will be ready to play. That is the only thing that I can worry about.”

“We didn’t show up tonight and that is disappointing. They played like a team who has a purpose and they do. They still have a playoff spot. I thought we would come out and make it as difficult as possible and compete a little bit better but we didn’t do that.”

“It was just one of those nights. As a team we had success against them the entire season except tonight. It is disappointing and we wanted to come out and sweep the season series, but we weren’t able to do that. We have to give them a lot of credit. They shot the ball really well. They passed the ball extremely well and rebounded the ball well. They pretty much kicked our butts tonight.”

“We couldn’t keep them out of the lane…from Jameer Nelson to Ish Smith. They really did a good job of getting into the paint and distributing the ball and finding those open shooters.”

“I know he (Coach Frank) wants to win badly. Everybody is disappointed and it is not just him. You lose games like this, everybody is disappointed. It is all of us as a group. We know we are not playing to the level that we are capable of, but we finally need to do it.’

“You have to give credit to them. Those guys came out hot. They were making shots and we definitely wanted to play better. This is the NBA, so we need to re-group and have a couple of days to get ready for Charlotte.”

“We have had some slippage these last two or three games, so we have to get back to how we were playing prior to those last three games.”

On ball movement… “Everybody moved the ball, everyone deserves credit, but a lot of that was Glen and Daniel. Just constantly running those pick and rolls. We either get something on the roll or it sucks the defense in and people are open.”

On Jason Richardson… “He was great tonight. His last two games, his energy and effort have been way, way up. He did a very good job. Both our wing guys were tremendous tonight.”

On tonight’s game versus their last win… “We played better tonight on an offensive stand point. Our competitive level was very high. Let’s hope we make this a habit, because it’s two games in a row now where we’ve played harder for longer than we have the rest of the year. Why that is, I don’t know. Our intensity in the last two games has been above what it’s been the rest of the year.”

On Ish… “Ish played extremely well. That certainly helped that whole unit play well. I thought Ish was fantastic tonight.”

On playing Ish more often… “He played very well tonight, but again on tonight, everybody played well. I’d consider playing all these guys a lot more minutes. There wasn’t a guy who stepped out on the floor tonight who didn’t play well.”

On their increase in energy since their win Saturday night… “Part of it is, I think, that you go through this season. It’s been hard and you’re sort of through this marathon and you’re trudging along and then there comes a point where you realize that you only have a few weeks to go. It doesn’t look interminable now. There are still going to be ups and downs with nine games to go. But I like the level we’ve played at the last two games and hopefully it will continue.”

On Glen Davis… “We were playing him about 22 minutes before. What would be good for all of them would be Dwight’s playing 36 and maybe Ryan and Glen are both in that 28 or 30 minute range. His play certainly warrants big minutes and that helps Ryan and Dwight as well.”

“I’m just here to fill a void. But at the end of the day, when everyone comes back, I have to go back to my role and just do my role to the best ability that I can.”

“It feels good. The opportunity to go out there and have the team depend on you more, you view the game in a different view now. Coming off the bench, you view it seriously but you’re not out there a lot. You’re out there 20 minutes of the game. There are so much more minutes of the game that’s being played, you’re out there and every possession counts and you know it. Just as much as 20 minutes of the game counts, it’s a little more frantic a little bit with 20 minutes out there, you got to do something. But when you’re out there long, you get a rhythm, you get a flow. It’s just my role out right now. Until then when it changes, I’ll go back and 20 minutes, I’ll do the best that I can.”

“I just think these last couple games, especially the Philly game; we’ve been on the same page. Just the same page defensively, energy-wise, everybody’s trying to read the same book and be on the same page. I’m really happy that we’re headed this way because at the end of the day, championship basketball, you have to play that way.”

“We haven’t seen J-Rich in double figures in a while. Guys like that and J. J. Redick, have been filling the void of those two guys. Jameer came and did some awesome things. At the same time, we played defense. I think a lot of our defense created our offense. We ended up with nine turnovers, like wow, that’s big for us, two in the first half. When we don’t turn the ball over, we’re making shots, and we’re playing defense, we’re tough. And we don’t even have Dwight. If we can put that all together with Dwight and Turk and guys like that, by the time playoffs come, we’ll be a tough team to beat.”

“We’re just going out there and playing the right way. We’re all out there pushing the ball, helping on defense and offensively just swinging it and getting it into the pick-and-rolls as much as we can. And you have teams running around and getting them off of our bodies, makes it a lot more spread out for us when we’re doing that.”

“One thing is that we’re playing a lot harder, especially on the defensive end. I think our defense and rebounding is generating a lot of our offense. You get a stop; get loose balls, that kind of gives you more energy out there.”