Head Coach Kenny Atkinson, Brooklyn Nets
On winning despite foul trouble and turnovers:
“We just kept at it. Just resilient, gritty, all those words. I thought our defense was consistent. We really got stops and our offense obviously wasn’t pretty but play after play some things didn’t go our way, some calls didn’t go our way, turnovers. We just went back on the defensive end and did a really good job. I thought keeping them off the boards was a huge emphasis tonight. They’re top five in the league, really great offensive rebounding team so I thought our guards did a great job coming back. We did all the little things and that’s what we’re searching for. I said it the other night, more consistency defensively, so to do it again tonight when we’re definitely not cliquing offensively, I thought it was a good job by our guys.”
On Spencer Dinwiddie’s performance down the stretch:
“He hit some big shots. I mean tough shots. I think two of them were fadeaways, but he’s got the ability to get downhill in the pick-and-roll and we had Quincy (Acy) out there. We kept Quincy in just to give him some space. That gives Spencer a lot more space to get to the rim and make plays, so again we went to the pick-and-roll. We went to it over and over and he delivered big-time shots.”
On not allowing Minnesota to take over the game early:
“I think we made them (his team) aware, like this team is taking teams out here, you know 16-0, 18-0. I think our guys are conscience enough and understood the importance of getting out to a good start tonight, so good job by our first unit. Like I said, they’ve been struggling in the first quarter, I think we addressed it two games ago -- our poor starts. So that was important to hold them at bay. Defensively I think we forced them into the shots we wanted. We only gave up 11 three-point attempts. That’s what we’re looking for, limit three-point shots. Still want to do a better job of keeping them off the free-throw line, but really good job by our guys following the game plan.”
Jahlil Okafor
On how good it felt to get some time in front of the home crowd:
“It was exciting just to be playing in front of the home crowd. It was a lot of fun. It was my first time in a while because when I played with Philly for a long time I was in Toronto, Utah. And then when I played with Brooklyn, I played in Toronto, so to finally play in front of a supportive crowd, it was a good feeling.”
On how he felt he did out there with the time he had:
“I’m happy with the way I performed. I’ve tried to work on making the team better and I think some of the stuff I talked about with Coach, I was able to achieve such as screen sighting and communicating and being active, having energy, and I was able to do that.”
On what his next step is and what he would like to accomplish:
“Get my minutes up, that’s the next step for me. To have more of an effect on the game and the things that the coaches want me to improve on and implement that with what I do well.”
Spencer Dinwiddie
On what he saw differently with the defense on the last play:
“It was the same switch situation. He was trying to limit the pull up three. He was pretty close so that’s why I went to drive. I mean, if he would have really stepped back, I probably would have shot it. It is what it is, but he stepped up, so I drove him, got to pretty much the same shot that I hit the previous time.”
On where this shot ranks in his career so far:
“I don’t know. I mean, the Cleveland one was probably a higher degree of difficulty. I just shot a pull up really. I mean, shoot, last game was a pretty high degree of difficulty. It was pretty far on the left wing. We really just kind of need to get out of these situations honestly. These do or die situations. I’d rather just win the game by like 10.”
On how much of a discussion it is that the Nets survived the first quarter and went on to win:
“It was one of the main things we spoke about. Adam Harrington did a great job with the scouting. You know the last couple games he told us they’ve started 15-plus to zero and when you spot a team that many points, it’s always hard to come back, so that was something that we really didn’t want to let happen and we didn’t.”