Pelicans Head Coach Stan Van Gundy
On the collapse after the great start:
“We started well. We went to the bench…it was bad, but it was bad the whole night from there on. Worst offensive game we’ve probably played with having all of our guys, or most all of our guys in a long time. We turned it over 18 times. Didn’t shoot the ball well and quite honestly, we’re so bad defensively that we can’t have a bad offensive night. We can’t even have a mediocre offensive night. If we have a bad offensive night, we’re going to get crushed like we did tonight because we don’t stop anybody. It affects our offense because we don’t get chances to get out and run in transition. Look, I understand it’s on me and what we’re putting out there defensively is embarrassing quite honestly. We’ve all got to take ownership of it. A lot of it is me and a lot of it is our players and they’ve got to take some ownership. We didn’t compete tonight, and that’s the bottom line. We didn’t compete. We didn’t help each other. We didn’t play together on either end of the floor. A really embarrassing evening for us tonight. (The Timberwolves) played well and were inspired to play. We didn’t seem to care. We got what we deserved. When I say we, again, I’m not putting it all on the players. I’m a big part of that too, but I’m not absolving them. It’s all of us.”
On the concern after this game to start the second half of the season:
“It’s interesting. I mean, to me, I don’t really understand it because I thought we had a long stretch of games there where I thought we had a lot of fight at the end of the first half of the season even though we had lost 9 of 13. The Milwaukee game, the San Antonio game, the Miami game without Zion, the end of the Chicago game in the fourth quarter…I mean we showed a lot of fight and competitiveness and everything else. I mean our defense has been a problem all year, but as far as our guys fighting to stay in games, I thought they’d been consistently doing that. So why tonight was the way it was…I really don’t know.”
Pelicans Forward Zion Williamson
On the difference between the first eight minutes compared to the rest of the game:
"I think we were just making shots the first eight minutes of the game and after that our shots weren't falling."
On if he still feels like the Pelicans are right there and aren’t that far away like he said before All-Star break:
"I still feel the same, or how I felt before All-Star break. I do feel like we're almost there. I hate to say this, but this is the NBA man. Losses like that happen every so often…not a lot, but every so often. We've got to come in tomorrow ready to play and hopefully we'll show the world why I said what I said."
Pelicans Forward Brandon Ingram
On tonight’s performance:
“Today was the first game back after we just had a break so we’re just getting the rust off a little bit, but of course we have (to have) an urgency. There’s only 35 games left, and we want to be in the playoffs, so we have (to have) the urgency to figure it out.”
On the condensed second half of the regular season:
"I think everybody has seen the schedule. We got a chance to get off of our feet a little bit, but this is our job. We have to come in every single day and just play basketball and listen to the game plans and the schemes of the game. Playing basketball is something that we love to do and we grew up doing. I think the mental part is just going through all of this COVID stuff, but basketball is the fun part.”