See what the Brooklyn Nets had to say after their 122-115 loss to the Minnesota Timberwolves.
KENNY ATKINSON
On the loss:
“Unacceptable performance by us. We were lucky to get to overtime quite honestly, and even at halftime, I felt like we’re just not playing at a high level. We’re not playing up to Nets standards. Hard to figure out why. And like I said, I didn’t think it was an overtime game. I thought they outplayed us. They were the better team. Give them a lot of credit. They were down guys. They fought, they fought extremely hard. They were extremely competitive and were rewarded with the win.”
On lost lead in fourth quarter:
“I just think generally we’re not playing well. When the lead happens and when it doesn’t, I felt like that in the first half, I said we’re not playing up to our standards. I think they deserved the win. I think they were super-competitive. They were down guys. They had guys come in and contribute. They were the better team. We were lucky to take it to overtime.”
On first time losing three straight since Irving injury:
“That’s how much I think of this team and these guys and how well we were playing. The standards have been raised. They raised the standards themselves, and for some reason, we’ve lost our mojo and I’m not sure why. Trust me, it’s not about the three losses, it’s not about dramatizing the loss. It’s more about the way we’re playing the game right now, that our process isn’t where it should be right now.”
JOE HARRIS
On what's missing lately:
“I think it’s just a level of focus. Right now this point of the season everybody’s a little bit banged up, but that goes across the board. Every team is the same way. It’s more of amental thing than anything else at this point. We just have to muster up energy and a level of focus. There should be a level of maturity in this locker room where we’ve all been through the grind of an NBA season a number of times and you can’t have slides like this. You can’t have three game stands where it’s more of an energy thing at the end of every game where you come back in the locker room and you’re like, trying to figure out what the hell is going on. But at the end of the day, it’s just more of a mental thing than anything else. It’s just a lack of focus, lack of energy.”
On team shooting ups and downs:
“I think shooting comes and goes. Over the course of the season there’s a lot of ebs and flows with that, but we kind of mentioned pretty much this whole season you’ve got to be, there’s a lot of non-negotiables out there, the things that you do defensively, on the glass, things that really are in your control, the effort, energy type plays. You can control all that. Shooting is going to come. Sometimes you’re going to have some good nights, the confidence is going to be there across the team, and other nights is not, but you’ve got to lock in and focus on the things that are in your control.”
SPENCER DINWIDDIE
On the loss:
“This one obviously, in the overtime we didn’t defend well enough. We could have made plays here or there to win in regulation obviously, but did our job decently since they only had 103 points. But them scoring basically 20 points in the OT, it’s only a five-minute stretch, that’s not near good enough. Like we talked about at the Houston game, each culprit has kind of been a little bit different, but either way it’s not good enough.”
On team 3-point shooting:
“Man, we have great players. We believe in our players. We fully expect our guys to make shots. We’ve just got to do that. Sometimes it’s a make or miss league and we’ve just got to make shots.”
On importance of Dallas game after losing three straight:
“Any time you have a losing streak, you want to right the ship. You never want to let it prolong or linger, or shoot you never want to let it turn into a streak. You lose one, you lose two, you kind of want to really get that next win so it never actually gets to a streak. But once I guess you hit that three mark and it’s deemed a streak you definitely want to break it.”