q: another game where...tonight it was Tyreke and Jrue just lived in the paint tonight. What can you do to start resolving that?
a: uh, i can't answer that. its a, uh, its the same problem every night. I guess we gotta get some better players who can contain the basketball because right now we can't.
q: turnovers, it seemed like you tried to get things going. turnovers was a problem they get 29pts off of those
a: yeah i mean 22 turnovers 29 points, you know ah...give up a 39pt 4th quarter...its...we're a bad basketball team, that's the bottom line. we're a bad basketball team right now.
q what did you see Tyreke and was able to make himself (question was faint)
a uh, got wherever he wanted to go. he gets 25pts 12assists, gets to the foul line at will, nobody can keep him in front of them, gets to the rim. uh, we can't defend wihtout fouling. I mean he's...if guys didn't think he was going to come into this arena and try to get off..they...I question their IQ. because he played here...and uh, he's going to come in here and try to show everybody that what we're missing. And he did.
q: was it consistently all game you saw you know guys just...playing them the way they were, did you see it falling apart in the 4th? Or was it pretty consistent overall.
a: no, we had some decent stretches tonghgt, you know, decent stretches. But you know everytime we tried to build a little bit of a lead we turned the ball over. We come out of a timeout in the 4th quarter, and we can't make an entry pass to the wing. We turn the ball out of a timeout, our starting point guard to our starting small forward. Rudy Gay has 7 tunrovers. DeMarcus has 4. Isaiah has 4, Marcus has 4....We're not that good where we can give teams 22 extra possessions I'll tell you that much. I don't know if we can beat them if we gave them zero extra possessions, but we give them 22 for 29 points...that's what happens.
q: overall rudy..was that overall one of the worst games he's had since being here, what do you attribute that too?
a: uh..I dunno know, maybe fatigue..played 4 games in 5 nights...a long flight home but I'm not a big excuse guy. He played bad. You know that's it. He had a bad game. And ah..he wasn't the only one. You know ah, you know we had a lot of guys that didn't play well tonight. and uh...to allow them to score 39 points...I can't get over that. That's like the Atlanta game. 39 points...you know how hard that is? You now how hard it is to give up 39 points in a quarter? That is embarrassing. I'm embarrassed. I dunno if anybody in that lockerrrom is embarrassed...but I'm embarrassed.
q: did you talk to them at all afterwards? i mean you obviously have a few days to kind of work with the guys...
a: yeah, well if we do the same thing against Miami...it'll be a 50pt 4th quarter. So...I can't control the turnovers. I can't make the passes for them. Uh that's..at some point these guys got to take responsibility. Plenty of times this season I put it on me, and I'll do that, but I tell you what...each guy in that lockerrrom has to start looking in the mirror, and owning up and taking responsibility for their play. And we don't have a lot of that right now. So...we'll continue to work, I'm going to continue to try to get the best out of this group, uh, there's a lot of season left, but my challenge to these guys is: who do we want to be? Are we just gonna be a team that wins once in a blue moon, and comes out here and puts on a performance like that...I don't know. So we'll see how we respond when we play against Miami on the 27th.
q: true that a team has to sort of hit rock bottom so to speak with a performance to start getting things turned around...can you even think of what more they have to go through?
a: no...how many times do you have to hit rock bottom? I mean look at our record. Uh, we've hit rock bottom four or five times now. So...maybe some of these guys are so used to losing they're accustomed to it. I'm not. I'm not used to losing. I'm used to being in the playoffs and being a competitive team that takes pride in its defense. And uh...right now we don't have a lot of guys that do that. So I'm not sure what their rock bottom is, but I hit my rock bottom about one week into the season.
