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Nets vs. Cavaliers: DeAndre Jordan, Joe Harris, and Steve Nash Top Quotes

See what the Brooklyn Nets had to say after their 125-113 loss to the Cleveland Cavaliers.

STEVE NASH

On two games against Cleveland:

“I don't want to overreact — but it is something we have to continue to chip away at. We have to build that resolve, that hunger that desire to win some hustle battles, to win the turnover margin, to win the rebounding margin. Win in other ways. We — we've got a lot of things to work on. There's a lot to clean up. It's very early. It's relatively knew having Ky back after two weeks. James joining the team. Kevin sitting out tonight. It’s a lot thrown at us. So, you know, I don't want to overreact, but we are going to urge the guys to clean up as much as we can the hustle areas. But also, schematically, just continue to refine and get better and you know how this league is. A few days ago, we were on a four game winning streak and now we under performed in two games. So, we've got to find a way to get ourselves playing a little cleaner, a little sharper, trying to clean up some of these categories that we're not competing well enough in.”

On turnovers increasing in second half:

“I don't know. You could say carelessness or you could say familiarity. We haven't played together. It's the second game. But you know, you want to protect them in a sense and say like, 'Hey it's early,' but at the same time you expect them to preform so, I don't want to give them an out, but I also don't want to overreact to the night and realize this is going to be a season where you know, it's going to be funky. It is not going to be your normal growth and progression where I think we've played more games than any team in the league, had less practice time, we're a new group and have had a lot thrown at us. So, I don't want to overreact, but we definitely are aware of our defensive inefficiencies and we have to control some of those things we can control. We can't control necessarily adding more defenders right now. But we can control how clean we are with our communication and our schemes. So, we've worked on that every off day. We go over it on game day and we just have to keep chipping away and keep improving in those areas.”

On playing better against tougher competition:

“Yeah, I mean, you see you see the records. We've done well against better teams. But we've talked to them about having a target on our backs and that you're gonna get people's best shots. They'll be excited to play the guys that we have on our roster. So there's a certain element of that. But like I said, we have to make them aware of that discrepancy in the effort against the team we're playing, but also just overall that we stick to what we will what our path is. And it's not a normal season, so it's not going to be two days between games sometimes where you can practice. It's going to be very rare. We're gonna have to really keep chipping away. It's gonna be small margins and small growth, but continually have that be our plan and not get sideways over a couple of losses. So we got to demand, we got to expect, we got to push and at the same time we got to understand that it's not going to be straightforward this season because of the parameters that were facing.”

DEANDRE JORDAN

On continuity:

“I think it’s very important. Now we have a full team. Everybody’s here. We just have to build off of that. We can’t get too down on ourselves or panic early, even though a lot of people want us to panic. Rome wasn’t built in a day. Championship teams weren’t built in a day. They’ve gone through struggles. So we’ve got to be able to take this on the chin and learn from it and ultimately come back and respond tomorrow and for the rest of the season. We know where we need to get better. We say it every game. We say it every practice, whenever we can practice. We’ve just got to be able to figure it out on the fly right now.”

On the defense:

“I think we’re still learning. We’ve got a long way to go. Obviously, we’re a great offensive team. We have a lot of guys who can score the basketball, who can playmake. But defensively, we’ve seen ourselves have great flashes and spurts, so we’ve just got to be able to put that together for as close to 48 minutes as possible. We don’t really have a lot of practice time, especially with a lot of the new guys coming in. Ky’s just coming back, getting his rhythm. I think we’ll pick it up here soon. We’ll have to in order for us to be a great team.”

On takeaways from two games vs. Cavs:

“I think collectively as a whole we have to come out with better focus on the defensive end. Just more of a sense of urgency. I know everybody says that and it kind of gets old after a while, but it is true. We’ve got to come out with defense on our mind. Maybe that has to be our identity. We obviously don’t want to overreact, because it’s very early in the season. We’re not even a month in. We lost two games back to back. You’ve got to give those guys credit. They came out, played hard, fought and were able to push a second overtime the other night and tonight they came out and had another great third quarter and we can’t play on our heels most of the game. We’ve got to attack on both ends of the floor.”

JOE HARRIS

On rematch with Cleveland:

“I think to a man everybody is very frustrated right now. We talked about a number of things yesterday in our film session and then even leading up to the game today. Obviously like you mentioned there’s a lot of things that we addressed we were trying to clean up. The stuff that we talked about was the stuff that hurt us again tonight. Not enough, I don’t know, the energy was definitely on their side, even when it was close in the first half, and we never got it in our favor. We never really felt any momentum. A lot of times I think that happens, a lot of times the defense gives you energy. When you’re able to get stops, string ‘em together, make some good defensive plays, you end up having a little bit more energy on the offensive end and vice versa. It is a very frustrating thing, but we can’t sit here and dwell on it. It’s such an early point in the season. The season is so young right now. We have so many games ahead of us, and we’ve got to stick together. We’ve got a game tomorrow that we’ve got to lock in on and try and get ourselves right.”

On facing Jarrett Allen and Taurean Prince:

"You wish that it wasn't against you, but obviously you're happy for them those are guys I built up good relationships with and that's the nature of the NBA. You play against a lot of guys that have been your teammates in the past obviously not probably as quick turnaround as this but you still hope that those guys do well."

On effort vs. scheme

“No, I don’t think it really matters what you draw up at this point if everybody’s not bought in, everybody’s not together, it’s hard to win in this league regardless of how much talent you have.”