Pelicans Head Coach Stan Van Gundy
On the difficulty of overcoming the team’s poor shooting performance:
“That’s sort of where we’ve been lately. If you go back to the last five or six games, we’ve been getting outscored 24 or 25 points per game on average from the three-point line. That’s hard…really hard. The other thing is that when you’re not making threes, then they’re doing things like at the end where they’d just come and double both Zion (Williamson) and Brandon (Ingram) wherever they were, not worrying about anything else. It’s difficult … it’s difficult.”
On the difficult defense Zion Williamson faced tonight:
“I told him that he and I would watch film on it. He made some really good plays that we could’ve converted. He had the one pass to Naji (Marshall) under the basket – Naji to Jaxson (Hayes) – and we don’t end up with anything out of it. I thought he and Brandon (Ingram) easily both could’ve had double-figure assist nights. Our guys are trying and playing hard. We have to be a little more efficient with our spacing. We have to execute better with that and then move the ball better. I thought we passed up some opportunities to play in transition, but we’ll try to work on it and move forward.”
Pelicans Forward Zion Williamson
On if the Knicks were loading up a bit more than he's used to, or if that's a coverage he's used to seeing:
"You’ve got to go off personnel, who you're playing against, what kind of players they have. Some teams can load up, but they may not have shot blockers or other teams may have multiple shot blockers. You’ve just got to look at who you are playing against, the personnel, and also what coach wants to get into on offense."
Pelicans Forward Naji Marshall
On what he's been trying to do to make an impact on the offensive end:
"Just whatever I can, hit the open shot, cut when I can to help BI (Brandon Ingram) or Z (Zion Williamson), or offensive rebound…just playing hard all together, whether it's on offense or defense. Whatever I can do to make it easy on my teammates, I'm doing."
On if it's been an adjustment playing off the ball:
"Not really. My freshman year coming into college, I played off the ball a lot…Trevon (Bluiett) and J.P. (Macura), and it's kind of the same thing with BI and Z. Like I said, just being ready when they swing it to me or making the right play on offense, cutting, making the right pass, whatever I have to do. I'm very familiar with the role."