Detroit: John Loyer | Will Bynum | Kyle Singler
Atlanta:Mike Budenholzer | Kyle Korver
(On Brandon Jennings): “My name for Brandon is point guard. He’s a point guard. He got people involved. I don’t worry about playing him. Brandon is a scorer. Brandon has been a great facilitator for us. He’s an unbelievable competitor. Tonight just wasn’t his night shooting the basketball. But there’s no reason for it and tomorrow night hopefully it’s his night shooting it too. But he was terrific getting other people involved. He started to attack in the third quarter and Will (Bynum) came in and finished it. That’s what teammates do.”
(On hustle plays): “We made two or three hustle plays that winning team’s make. If you make those plays, you have a chance to be a winning team; two and three bodies on the floor, couple guys going out of bounds. You guys all watch the NBA; the better teams do that. We have to get our guys to do it more often than we’re doing it currently. But we had a nice stretch there and guys competed.”
(On winning): “Winning cures all. We can use this as a stepping stone, continue to improve, continue to get better, one game at a time, and hopefully make the playoffs.”
(On making changes to win): “With us I think it takes one spark, one little mental change, a little adjustment and we can go on a run and make some good things happen.”
(On Kyle Korver): “He’s very dangerous. Kyle’s a great shooter so you can’t give him much space. You can’t let him have an inch or he is going to shoot the ball.”
(On energy and the third quarter):“They were on fire but we weren’t playing really good defense. Maybe half of those were layups. I thought our play picked up in the third quarter, we were pressing them and we just turned them over and it just created tempo. You could hear the tempo, you could hear the energy in the game pickup and it was a fun game to play.”
(On energy): “We felt great energy out there and it was great. I don’t think I’ve been at a game like that at The Palace in a while so it was a cool game to play.”
(On Game): "I think the competiveness of the group and the activity of the group for a lot of the game was really good. We got outscored in the third quarter 34-20. We will have to go back and look at the film because we cannot give up 34 points in a quarter. You have to give Detroit a lot of credit. Different guys stepped up and made plays."
(On eight straight losses): "It comes down to our competitiveness and our activity. That is the only way we are going to get success out of this league. If we compete, be active, we focus on improvement and getting better, then that will take care of the success that we want to have."
(On intentionally fouling Andre Drummond): "I think that helped us stay in the game. He (Andre Drummond) missed several and I do not think we scored on the other end every time, but it gave us an opportunity and he obviously had a heck of a game. He is a heck of a young player."
(On game): "I thought we battled hard tonight, but we didn't have a particularly good third quarter. They came out and scored 34 points, so they obviously got a great pep talk at halftime. I thought we made more mistakes rather than it being an effort thing. I thought we battled hard tonight, so that's a positive thing. Shelvin (Mack) played great and hopefully we can come back tomorrow."
(On injuries): "We're a smaller team right now. We've got some guys out. DeMarre (Carroll) is still finding his rhythm and until that happens, we have to rely on energy and all of that. We have to play hard for each other."