Detroit: Lawrence Frank | Rodney Stuckey | Greg Monroe
Milwaukee: Scott Skiles | John Henson | Brandon Jennings
(On the Milwaukee’s Bucks’ performance…) “Yeah, a lot of easy baskets. The Milwaukee Bucks were very aggressive. You have to give them a lot of credit. The tough challenge is our guys sitting for a very long time. The whole goal tonight is to put our players in tough positions were they can make plays and help our team out.”
(On younger team…) “All these things are building blocks and positives. Both Andre (Drummond) and Kim (English) had positive performances. We need to regroup and evaluate where we are at. Both of these players are building blocks for us.”
(On goals for preseason…) “We are trying to give these games a lot of different combinations and evaluate each performance. We have three centers so we are trying to evaluate each role and who fits. These first three opportunities, we are trying to give everyone a chance and evaluate. Right now our focus is on us, and we have a lot of things to work on.”
(On Andre Drummond…) “He is physically gifted and is a beast. He is on the glass consistently and is always working game. He’s simply only going to continue to improve.”
(On his performance tonight…) “We’re just trying to get better as a team. We want to make the playoffs this year and we’re taking the right steps towards the playoffs. ”
(On Pistons’ goals…) “We’re always preaching that we are a defense oriented team, first. We’re just going to continue to move the ball and create great shots. ”
(On his role on the team…) “I’m just looking to continue to expand my game. I’m going to continue to get better at the things I progressed on last year but also continue to work on the things that I did not excel at on last year. We’re just looking to continue work and get better all the time.”
(On the defense tonight…) “After the initial start of the game when we had so many turnovers, which usually we don’t do, we settled down quite a bit. Our guys got really active. I thought (on) a couple of mistakes we made we were able to wipe them out of there with a couple of blocked shots and chasing plays down. We’re probably not going to get 14 blocks very often, but we’ll take it.”
(On the energy to start the second half…) “It’s the second game in a row where we’ve come out after halftime with a lot of juice. We’re trying to make that a point of emphasis. We have every year, but both games we’ve been good at it. Guys have been talking about it. Defense has been sharp, the ball’s been moving. Obviously when our guards can get out on the break and pass the ball and things like that, we’re a very good club.”
(On John Henson …) “John played well tonight. The issue isn’t can he play. He’s struggled to pick up what we’re trying to do, so tonight was a step forward for him. He was able to do some things he did in the first game and we’ve seen him in practice and we’ve seen him in the summer league. A couple of his blocks and a couple of Larry’s (Sanders) blocks were big-time, professional blocks. You can obviously see glimpses of how talented he is.”
(On playing tonight…) “It felt good, man, just getting in there and being able to play and do some of the things I’m good at.”
(On the team’s defense…) “That’s one thing we all saw we had is length. Tobias (Harris) even had four blocks, so you know we did well. I think we played well defensively protecting the basket.”
(On the team’s defense …) “We’ve got a lot of size now this year. That’s expected and hopefully that can be something that can help us out this whole year.”
(On the third quarter …) “Our confidence is really high. We’ve been competing at a high level. I think what we were able to get on a lot of fast breaks is because we know they were going to get the rebounds and Monta (Ellis) and whoever the three-man was out there were just running the floor.”