(Since day one, you said you’ve been a no excuse ball club, no excuse coach, no excuse team. What is it going to take for this team to figure that out?): "We need some grittiness and some toughness to surface, especially on the road. Right now it’s not happening, and I don’t know if it’s because we don’t have the home crowd giving us a little extra energy or what it is. But some of the things I saw tonight, what I saw in Milwaukee is new to me. We haven’t done that stuff, whether it was in the preseason or training camp or practices or any other game. I haven’t put my finger on it yet, but we can’t play the way we did out there. We have to keep fighting, and we have to keep working. That’s the only thing I know."
(The [Anthony] Bennett injury made you look like you shuffled the lineup a little bit, Sergey [Karasev] played, Tyler [Zeller] and Andrew [Bynum] together and the three guards together. Were you looking for some kind of spark?): "I was trying to find something. I need some consistency from somebody. Right now, there’s not anybody on the roster that has given us consistent minutes. We’ve had guys look good for two or three minutes here, but then they disappear, and then they look good for another two or three minutes down the road, and then they disappear again. I’m going to start searching for somebody to be consistent for us because, right now, we’re not getting it."
(Intensity-wise, do you think there’s going to be any revving up a bit?): "At certain situations in the game, our offense has been working for us, but defensively, we didn’t get the stops that we needed."
(Have you noticed a difference in focus level at home versus the road?): "I’m not trying to make any excuses for the team, but coming out, we string together a couple of quarters and then we just fall off, and we can’t do that going forward, especially playing against good teams."
(Did it go the way you figured it would?): "Yeah, I guess. It was just another game for me."
(Did you feel it was uncalled for to get that type of that reception constantly from those fans?): "I thought it was a little weak. Honestly, I thought it was going to be much worse."
(Just talk about this performance. The guys look good out there): "They were very good. They stayed together when we got down in that first period, to their credit, and they’ve showed signs of this, even when we’ve been losing and get dispirited. They do a good job of staying together. Our defense was pretty good the final three periods."
(What’s the one thing that impressed you the most about this group?): "The defense the final three periods, the collective effort and the fact that we didn’t roll over at the start. The defense is the thing that we’ve talked a lot about. We see the numbers that were put up against us the previous two games, the threes and all those types of things. The thing that stood out the most from the last game, everybody that would look at a stats sheet would say, “Geez, they shot a lot of threes and made a lot of threes,” and then they would say that about Golden State, and so on. What we saw as a coaching staff was a team that was beyond bad in transition defense, and it started there. Everything else grew from there. I feel like the single thing that I get out of it was carry over from watching a tape and talking about what had happened, and seeing it, and working at it, and seeing it carry over to the game is always the most encouraging thing from a coaching standpoint."
(What does Tony Wroten bring to this team? What have you seen from him since he’s gotten here that maybe has changed for the better?): "I think there’s no question with his talent, I think it’s kind of with his athleticism. It brings a definite change of pace at that position off the bench, a spark on both ends of the floor. I think as is the case with a lot of young players, you have to learn how to control that, I think we all kind of went through that. Game by game, you’re seeing that progression of him being able to do that. "
(But calming him down isn’t something that you want to do to control it, I would imagine?): "No, no, you want to keep that attitude, that pit bull kind of mentality, and then make the tweaks elsewhere."
(You don’t seem to have a tough time manufacturing energy off of the bench. Where is it coming from?): "Just being the person who I am. I just bring the energy from within myself. That’s something that coach asked of me, to come off the bench and bring a lot of energy."
(Last year, you had one game where you scored double figures, and that’s become who you are for this team. A lot of that is minutes and opportunity. Just what it feels like knowing you could be that guy and now you’re showing it): "It’s a great feeling. All the hard work paid off. Being able to get the opportunity here, being able to play a lot just feels like a blessing."