On Denver Nugget’s offensive rebounds winning the game:
“That’s where the game was. One hundred percent right there. I thought our initial defense was really good most of the plays they had and we gave up second shots, sometimes third shots. Fourteen offensive rebounds the first half and really, 11 the second half. That’s just too much to overcome. When you think about the fact that they had 106 shots at the basket and got over 40 percent of them back, that’s just another thing that’s tough to overcome. The one thing that it does to us is never allow us to get an opportunity to play in the open court because most of the time we’re taking the ball out of the basket on the second or third shot. That’s really where the game was. We had our moments. Seemed like every time we made a run back at them we got it to three, and they got an offensive rebound. We don’t have to look any further than that to see the difference in the game.”
On difficulty of reintegrating Zion Williamson:
“I don’t really buy that as an excuse for what happened tonight because he’s out there and has been positive with everything when he’s on the floor. He’s played great for us. At the end of the day, when he’s on the floor we’ve been plus 16 (points) tonight. It doesn’t have anything to do with integrating him back in and everything to do with us keeping them off the offensive boards. That’s where the game was. We can talk about integrating Zion in but there’s not anybody in the world that would like to add him in. Like I said, the minutes that he played we were plus 16. His integration is fine. We have to find a way to get ourselves into transition and the only way we can do that is not taking the ball out of the basket and getting our rebounds.”
FORWARD ZION WILLIAMSON
On his thoughts on his second game:
“My conditioning was a lot better even though it’s only been one game and I feel like I’m getting my chemistry back with my teammates.”
On the issue allowing the Nuggets offensive rebounds:
“I mean, they’re the second best offensive rebounding team in the league and they showed us. I’m not going to sit here and sugarcoat anything and say like it was some … nah they just outrebounded us. I don’t think we wanted it enough tonight. We picked it up a bit in the second half, but it’s a game of two halves and we didn’t play both.”
On how he played in the minutes he had:
“I feel like I played alright. I think I missed a few passes to Jrue (Holiday) and Lonzo (Ball) threw to me, I feel like could have been a couple easy buckets. I was out there on the offensive rebound side so I feel like I could have done better with that as well.”
On Pelicans’ offensive difficulties:
“I felt like we made a point of it. Sometimes, it just doesn’t go your way. They did a good job of five guys going in there and rebounding in the paint. They were being consistent about it, something we tried to make an adjustment to but didn’t do a very good job of.”
On if the struggle can be attributed to growing pains incorporating Zion in to the line-up:
“A little bit when you have somebody of that magnitude in for the first time. I felt like we go through stretches where, even when he’s not on the court, we have to pick it up a little bit. We’ll figure it out.”
