PELICANS HEAD COACH ALVIN GENTRY
(On the game)
“Obviously, beating a team of this caliber and doing it on their home floor is rewarding. I just think the guys that we put out there, they played extremely hard. Led by Jrue Holiday - he competes every night, it doesn’t matter. Someone asked me, ‘did he have a good game or a bad game’, he never has a bad game, because he plays at such a high level and he competes at such a high level. I don’t think you can ever say what he’s had is a bad game. I thought he did as about a good job as you could possibly do. Then he (James Harden) goes 11-32 (FG), 6-18 from three, and that’s the best you can ever hope for when you’ve got James Harden. Then, I thought we had other guys come in and step up. Ian (Clark) made shots for us; Kenrich (Williams) came in and did a great job on the boards, 16 rebounds. It was a total team effort. It wasn’t anybody that stood out and then I talk about Jahlil (Okafor), he’s been solid. The kind of numbers he put up tonight is the kind of numbers he’s been putting up since we moved him into the lineup.”
(On what changed in the third quarter when the Pelicans were able to take the lead)
“I think what happened was that we kind of got the three-pointer out of the game. I thought we had played well in the first quarter and the first half. The three-point shot was the difference in the game and I thought we did a good job of taking it out. They ended up shooting 19-56 (from the three), so at one stage they (Rockets) were 11-19 and I thought we did a good job, or at least be in a position to challenge it (three-point shots), and because of that and the misses, we were able to get out and run, and have separation and space, so we had driving lanes and we did a good job.”
PELICANS GUARD JRUE HOLIDAY
(On what keyed the Pelicans turnaround)
“I just thought we did a good job. (We) made some minor adjustments that we felt would help win the game. They got a lot of threes early. Eric (Gordon) – I think got 3 threes and James Ennis got a couple of wide-open threes. Minor adjustments, and again – just kept playing.”
(On disrupting James Harden)
“I don’t know. I just tried to show him different things. Definitely tried to trap him any chance we got. We tried to trap him and tried to make him see two people. At least, try to get him to pass the ball and have somebody else make a play. We know how great of a playmaker he is. (We) Just tried to make it difficult.”
PELICANS CENTER JAHLIL OKAFOR
(On the team’s performance)
“I think with everybody being out, we just all came together. The message was to just have fun, play together out there, and give it your all. We’ll live with the outcome and we were able to pull out the W (win). We huddled up before the game and pretty much said, ‘let’s just have fun; this is what’ve dreamed of’. A lot of guys, who haven’t been able to play, now had an opportunity to play – (and) made the most of it. Guys like Ian (Clark), Kenrich (Williams), they all just stepped up. It was a collective effort.”
(On Kenrich Williams’ 16 rebounds)
“That’s what we’re used to seeing from him. It’s actually in practice – he’s the guy that gets us extra possessions, defensive rebounding as well. He just has the knack for finding the ball and he came up big for us tonight. ”
PELICANS GUARD/FORWARD KENRICH WILLIAMS
(On the game)
“We just wanted to come out as a team and play hard, and just respond – just play hard and give it all we’ve got. That’s pretty much it.”
(On his game-high 16 rebounds)
“That’s all that rebounding is about (getting to the ball). It’s just going every time and playing hard and giving it all you’ve got. ”
(On forcing the Rockets to take tough shots)
“I think we did a good job as a team defensively. Of course, (James) Harden is going to get his, but as a team - we did a good job defensively. We just helped the helper basically. We had each other’s back tonight.”