Dec. 15, 2008 at Washington
Pacers 118, Wizards 98
PACERS COACH JIM O'BRIEN
(On tonight’s game) “The Wizards came back and tied it up, but our guys just hung tough. It shows how active we were defensively. Danny (Granger) had 16 deflections tonight. Between Danny (Granger), Jarrett (Jack), and Marquis (Daniels), they had 35 deflections. They really defended at a high level and we did what we had to do to win.”
(More on the game) “We had a high efficiency when we ran and moved. Anytime you have 25 assists and only 10 turnovers, that’s a good thing. We were sharing the basketball and were very active defensively.”
(On offense and defense) “We did a great job on the offensive glass. We take a lot of long shots and long shots produce long rebounds. We were crashing the boards and the ball was bouncing over their heads. It was about the way the ball bounced tonight.”
PACERS FORWARD DANNY GRANGER
(On the defensive effort) “We wanted the offense to run by getting defensive stops. We did a lot of that tonight. We got our hands in the passing lanes.”
(On rebounding) “We made it a point to out-rebound our opponent and tonight we did a great job of that. We also had a lot of offensive boards.”
PACERS GUARD T.J. FORD
(On the Wizards’ third quarter run) “They made plays. Teams are going to make a run. They didn’t lie down. They didn’t fold."
"They chipped into the lead and came out very aggressive and attacked the basket.”
PACERS CENTER ROY HIBBERT
(On returning to the Verizon Center) “I’ve got a lot of memories here."
"There’s that Final Four banner hanging up top. I walked by the locker room with the big ‘G’. It was fun.”
WIZARDS INTERIM COACH ED TAPSCOTT
(On rebounding) “Defensive rebounding makes the difference in the game. You haven’t made a stop defensively until you have secured the ball. Theoretically we had good stops on a number of occasions tonight, but we were unable to come up with the ball. We have to focus in on rebounding at practice, so we can give ourselves a better chance during the game.”
(On Darius Songaila) “Darius has been playing pretty well lately; he plays very competently on the floor. We have to get the other guys off the bench up to speed and playing like that.”
WIZARDS FORWARD ANTAWN JAMISON
(On tonight’s game) “It’s about execution, playing smart and you’ve got to have effort for the full 48 minutes. If you look at what Indiana did, we got back into it but they executed down the stretch. They played smarter and they played hard for 48 minutes. There were a lot of breakdowns defensively, (we were) not communicating, and offensively we were not executing. If we do that with the way things have been going then the outcome is going to be what it was tonight.”
(On correcting their mistakes) “I’m the captain and it’s my job to make sure that we don’t start pointing fingers or thinking it’s over with. We have a job to do and that is to go out there and play basketball. The things we’ve been doing are correctable, but we’ve got to start fixing them now. It’s a big task, but we’re up for it. This is what we get paid to do.”
(On defense) “Our defense is killing us. We’ve just got to talk. We’ve got to help each other out. We know what we’re supposed to do – we’re just not getting it done out there. There are 15 players that put on this uniform and represent this organization. We’ve got to do it collectively as a group and we’ve got to figure out a way to do it soon.”
WIZARDS CENTER ANDRAY BLATCHE
(On moving forward) “We’ve got a lot of stepping up to do. Guys are still sticking together. We’ve got Antawn (Jamison), a great vet, he’s still encouraging people to fight hard and stay together. We’re going to fight hard and continue to stick together and try to turn this thing around.”