Pelicans Coach Monty Williams On the win “It was tough to watch our team play the way we did in the first half. We didn’t have a lot of juice on the defensive end. In the second half we held them to 40 points in regulation and 6 in overtime…a lot of effort. You can look at Tyreke Evans, Anthony Davis, and Brian Roberts’s numbers, but the bottom line is we just hung in there. The lord blessed us. I’m proud of our guys. We just fight and hang in there together.”
On Tyreke Evans “Tyreke has the ability to play at a high level every single night and that’s my biggest thing with him: every possession counts. I am going to continue to demand that from him because I think he has abilities that not a lot of people have.”
Pelicans Forward Anthony Davis On the key to overcoming the emotions of the game and getting the win “Defense. Brian Roberts is a tough kid. He said to Coach, ‘I can go,’ and that’s hard work. He’s a great kid. For him to come back and make big plays, make a big three, and get some big rebounds that was huge for him and for us as a team. Just knowing that the team needed him, and he came out and played. We executed on defense and got big rebounds. Coach was going to take Anthony Morrow out, but we left him in there and he made two big threes. That’s the type of thing that we need. He wants to be in the game to make big shots like that.”
On the play of Tyreke Evans “He was aggressive from the start of the game and that’s what we need. If he’s going to keep playing like that, we’re going to keep giving him the ball to let him do what he does best. We did a great job defensively as a unit limiting Paul Pierce’s and Joe Johnson’s opportunities down the stretch.”
Pelicans Guard Tyreke Evans On the game “It was a great game. We never gave up. They came at us in the first half and pushed us around, Coach (Monty Williams) got on us at halftime, and we picked it up. I wanted to pick it up in the second half. My main thing was to try and pick it up and play my game, and we did.”
On what Coach Williams said at halftime to the team “He got on us. They pushed us around in the first half. We are not that type of team. We’re a young team, but we don’t get pushed around. Second half I went out and attacked and did what I did.”
On his play in the second half, including scoring 14 points in the third quarter “I was in attack mode. They were talking trash and we weren’t about to back down to nobody. We were on our home court. We did a good job of finishing out the game strong and it was a good win for us.”