See what the Brooklyn Nets had to say after their 132-114 win over the Houston Rockets.
STEVE NASH
On Harden's Houston return:
“You could tell it meant something to him. You know, this place is special to him. Houston means a lot to him – the city, the organization and what he accomplished here with this team. I know it was a big game for him. I was proud of him for the way he handled it. The turnovers in the first half, I don’t even know if we want to put all that on him. Sometimes it happens. Sometimes, you’re trying to create for your team at the rate that he does, you’re going to turn it over. They were trapping it a little bit and maybe one or two were careless … too many turnovers but he also did a lot of great things and finally settled in. You look at his stat line – three steals, a block to go with the triple double. Outstanding performance.”
On chat with Irving in fourth quarter:
“Just checking in with him, making sure he's doing OK and making sure he's in the right frame of mind and these are tricky games, the last game before a break. You've got a short window to spend time with loved ones. For Ky and James, they've got to go to All-Star Weekend and it's tricky mentally when you play such an intense schedule and then you've got one game before you're free. It's kind of like the last day of school. It's hard to focus. So just kind of checking in, making sure he's OK and you know, he played well down the stretch and made some big shots.”
On potential to improve with Durant return:
"We can definitely improve. Kevin Durant is one of the all-time greats, so to add him to our team will make us better automatically, but we can still improve with our cohesion, continuity of hopefully having some health for an extended period of time. We can get better defensively, our understanding and refining our schemes and learning to feel tighter together. That’s a big part of it – not just knowing what to do but knowing who you’re playing with and how you can communicate and make things easier and more effective, so plenty of good areas to improve in and that’s the fun. The fun is seeing growth and improvement."
JAMES HARDEN
On return to Houston:
“I’m excited. We got a win. We’ve been playing very, very good basketball, and to finish out strong like this to in the All-Star break means a lot to us. Hopefully we can get guys healthy; KD, Jeff, TLC, and after the break just keep rolling. As far as playing in Houston, a lot of mixed emotions from the fans, but knew that was gonna happen. I just wanted to come out here and give them a show.”
On Nets closing out last two games:
“When it’s time to lock in and time to focus, we do that. Obviously, being up so many points it’s natural just to get comfortable and relax a little it. And then, some teams like San Antonio go on runs and play defense and make shots. Give those teams credit. But I think for sure, we know what we’re trying to accomplish, and we know our positioning on the court on both ends of the ball, and so when we’re not doing that, we have to get back to that and we’ve done a really good job of that. Adding KD back, adding Jeff back, adding TLC back is gonna bring more excitement and we’re gonna have more fresh legs.”
On Houston plans to retire jersey:
“Hopefully I did something right. Obviously I came up short of a championship, but the work on and off the court that I put in over the past eight years was elite you know, and obviously I think that’s the only thing I didn’t do, or didn’t accomplish is a championship, which is difficult to attain, but as far as bringing excitement to this city, taking care of the fans on and off the court is something that I try to contribute, so hopefully that outweighs that.”
JOE HARRIS
On closing out Rockets, Spurs:
"I think it shows the maturity of the group. We realize that teams are gonna make runs, and (we’ll) give up points during the course of the game. And in particular, late in games, too. They kind of got it going there shooting-wise, sort of making some shots, hitting some tough contested 3s, finishing at the rim, getting some fouls. But you know, we just kind of stayed resilient, honestly. And a lot of that falls on the guys that are at the top; you’ve got Steve, James, Ky, DJ, Jeff Green. Like, everybody's so even keel that when teams make those runs, they're relaying the information back to the team, talking about just ‘we're staying with it, staying with it.’ And we've been able to kind of hold off some momentum and push it from the Spurs the other night, and then the Rockets tonight.”
On Nash's message going into All-Star break:
“He talked about it a little bit there right after the game just about how much we've improved in particular these last 10, 11 games and we were really starting to come together. We obviously are looking forward to having Kevin back getting a lot of the other roster healthy you know we got guys that are banged up right now. So break will be huge just to get guys healthy and then hopefully we can continue this momentum in the second half.”
On team chemistry:
"I think I touched on that earlier just about how it's one of those things where we just didn't have a ton of time together early on. It wasn't like James and a lot of the guys on the roster were here at the beginning of the season. There's been a lot of shakeup over the course of the season but we're starting to get to a point where things are solidified and you're starting to see it on the court as well where guys are kicking out for one another offensively, defensively feeding off one another feeling each other in terms of rhythm and predetermining what's going on and a lot of that is the continuity. Just getting used to playing with one another and you're starting to see that now and hopefully we can continue getting even better at it because in the grand scheme of things we haven't even spent that much time together."