Domantas Sabonis, De’Aaron Fox & Coach Brown | Postgame Pressers 2.7.24

Domantas Sabonis, De’Aaron Fox & Coach Brown | Postgame Pressers 2.7.24

Uh domas obviously a tough one what what is uh most disappointing to about this loss um just our effort you know coach talked about it you know and uh we really didn’t have any effort there um and that’s what made that lead and then we just couldn’t uh get back up domas

What is it that you think causes those moments where you guys come out flat against teams that aren’t very good and and you get bit we just got to come out you know and play um we just got to respect you know each each opponent you

Know um no matter who’s on the court you know and um and fight for for for for your team you know and uh we got to play to a certain standard that uh we believe we are hey doas um obviously that third quarter ended in a nice way you guys

Erased that deficit uh how surprising was it to see them kind of respond the way they did um I mean everyone knows in the NBA once you let a team going you know um it’s hard to stop them you know so we kind of got that lead back but um in the fourth

Quarter they just kept hitting shots you know and we couldn’t get stops if you uh share your thoughts about uh the way uh Jay iy played tonight because he was the biggest factor in that game along with Alec Burke yeah he played he played great I

Don’t know how many threes he had there j i five five for seven you know he kept knocking down shots especially in the fourth quarter you know um kind of killing us you know and um we kept answering but they just kept having a three on the other side you know which

Kind of deflates a team trying to make a comeback is this one harder to look at like a loss you know you guys obviously had a fantastic road trip um and then you have a game like this against a team that’s only got six wins and they’re M

Down some players does does that add a weight to the loss or do you chalk it up as one of 82 uh it sucks you know a loss is a loss but at the same time you know this is one of those games that we have

To win and you know and we have to take accountability for that Darren what’s uh what’s the toughest part of this loss what are you most disappointed in tonight oh me we gave we gave up 133 points uh they shot 56 55 we have to be better

On that end of the Court dear in the season you guys are struggling defending the three what is it that you think that’s the problem there teams are shooting over 40% now on the season yeah I mean uh I guess we we need to close

Out better um a lot of times it’s the guys who we’ve labeled as hot um so when you know guys Shooters we just have to be able to get them off the line I mean we’re not giving up a lot of Threes but we’re high percentage of Threes Fox you

See the way you guys closed out that third did it feel like you guys had maybe turned a corner there and and just what did you think of the way they responded oh I mean I think they responded well uh obviously you’d rather not get down like that but um it was

Great to to show fight obviously it’s happened to us as well coming coming back fighting and losing at the end so um I mean any team can beat any team on any given night yeah and kind of along those lines too I mean does this I mean

I know you guys had a nice road trip and and you know you come back and you have a game like this against a team that’s kind of been historically bad does that add any more weight to the loss based on who you lost to uh it adds one loss to the Lost

Column dear can you uh if you could share your thoughts on the way Jay Navy was playing tonight yeah he was he was great tonight I mean we couldn’t contain him he was getting downhill whenever he wanted uh finishing in the paint I mean he made five threes uh we just have to

Be able to make it tougher on someone like that and uh I mean he had a great game I’d like to give uh Monty and his staff and his players credit they came in here and they did what they were supposed to do to get a win so hats off

To those guys for uh executing the way they did uh offensively and getting enough stops to get the win uh but it’s you know I there are many times during the season where I could say that I was disappointed in our performance and uh tonight is definitely one of them

If not at the top of the list um the way we played the game especially defensively uh was not good they had Detroit had their way with us we couldn’t contain the dribble Drive in ISO situation we couldn’t contain the ball in pick and roll situations uh they

Got downhill and collapsed our defense and sprayed the ball for uh three-point shots after going along the Baseline um J he just he torched us uh Jaylen Duran he was a handful Alec Burke and Sasser Off the Bench uh they got to their spots and created scoring opportunities for themselves Time After

Time After Time even when we tried to Blitz uh the ball they just dribbled right around our double team and went downhill and we had to commit a third guy and you know now you’re de now instead of being one short on the perimeter when you Blitz you’re two

Short on the perimeter but uh uh the way We performed defensively um it’s it was not good and and it’s it was concerning and I you know I I told the guys I said I hope that this thingss I hope that this stings because the way we

Played there wasn’t anything that I can say that was good about it and I am disappointed in the way we played and it it’s un acceptable and for us to think that it’s okay or to feel like this was a tough one because we came off of uh uh

You know a 14-day road trip that’s a bad bad excuse if any of us think that way I hope none of us think that way uh because we can play better and at the end of the day um I don’t care if we lose the game because

You’re going to lose you’re going to lose games and you know uh these guys beat Oklahoma City a few games ago um so you’re going to lose games and you’re going to lose games that everybody thinks you should win but if you lose a basketball game

You at least want to be able to look yourself in the mirror and say I left it out on the floor and I don’t think many of us can say we can look oursel in the mirror tonight and that we left it out on the floor that’s what’s disappointing to me

Not necessarily the loss although I would like to win I just don’t believe many of us can look in the mirror and say we left it out on the floor which is very disappointing yeah Mike we talked about it before the game but again the three-point shooting became like a huge

Issue in this game is there something that you guys need to do structurally to to change up some of this or is it again just a second effort and and that type of stuff the first thing j is doing what we do um um I mean there were a couple

Examples and I talked to our guys at the end of the game you know Alec Burke is hot and he’s got the ball in the left wing late in the game and he’s three feet behind the three-point line and fox closes to him and FL Fox closes short

Alec Burke raises up into the shot Fox contests now everybody would think that that’s a a great contest because he was almost hand to hand that’s not how we that’s not how we close out to hot guys we practice we we we say we’re going to hip hot guys that

Means you run basically put your chest or or put your body on their side in a no middle stance and as he raises up now you raise up to contest but you don’t get to him stop short hands down now he raises up and then you raise the contest

So we have to do what and we worked on that today we worked on that today we work on it a lot we worked on it today for uh five minutes during the defensive segment and we don’t close out the right way a lot of theirs threes came off the

Pick and roll whether we blitzed or tried to play our normal coverage the B whoever the ball handle was dribbled around domas went along the Baseline we had to commit another guy so now you got three guys trying to contain the basketball because he’s just getting around us when that happens if you’re

Not actively on the side of the ball with high hands instead of you know putting your chest in front and not letting that ball get around you if that once that ball gets along the Baseline and it flattens the defense and you’re not there to try to uh have active hands

They’re going to throw darts to players along the perimeter and now it’s a long close out because you committed the third guy to the ball because he went around the the pick and roll defense and could have shot a layup if we didn’t commit a third guy to the ball um in

Transition one time we ran back to the paint we should have ran to a guy that was open on the wing you know so these are things that we practice and we will continue to practice um but at some point we have to say you know what I’m

I’m going do it the right way and if it doesn’t work I’m going do it the right way at the highest freaking level and if it doesn’t work then I’m a point and say we got to change things up there’s there’s nothing to change up right now

Because we’re not doing our job or we didn’t do our job tonight for sure Mike I I wonder you know especially given the success of the road trip does how much does tonight kind of take away from maybe some of that feeling that you guys

Had you know going five and two is great you know and and I I do I feel like we’ve played play some pretty good basketball but you know I don’t like how we played in Cleveland defensively and that had some carryover to to tonight I you know

Like we have to every time we step on the floor want to display some grittiness but our mindset right now is if things don’t go well it’s because something offensively we’re not doing right and trying to convince our guys that hey don’t worry about the offense

The offense gonna be up we we didn’t play well offensively tonight we scored 120 points that’s enough to win a ball game but we’re making the same mistakes over and over again defensively and we don’t understand how important it is to figure that out sooner than later and that’s that that’s concerning

To me it was concerning in the Cleveland game it’s concerning tonight and hopefully it can change going forward because yes you go five- two you feel good about your record but you know you you feel and see things that that aren’t good especially longterm to be a long term to be able to

Sustain what you what you feel and hope your record can be if that makes sense Mike uh the ups and the downs and and kind of the inconsistencies is it is it more a product of in your mind like physical shortcomings or or something like mentally uh with this group

Probably a combination of both uh because like I said we we we literally practiced closing out today we practice defending the ball in the pick and roll and we couldn’t close out to hot guys we haven’t been able to close out to hot guys uh and that that’s been a part of

That you know although we we’re winning that still has been a struggle for us for the most part we’ve had stretches where we’ve been okay with it and then the the the pick and roll I mean are I you know obviously I’m going to

Look at it but i’ I’d love to see where we R where we rank uh defensively in the pick and roll game cuz tonight it was not good every time somebody came almost every time somebody came out with the pick and roll they got around us and collapsed our defense

Coach obviously uh the deadline is here and you guys are professionals but do you think it’s possible that some guys came into this game with the trade deadline on their mind and maybe not the game as much as it should have been I you’d have to ask them yeah I don’t know

Yeah coach when you say you’re kind of making the same mistakes defensively it’s stuff we’ve heard you talk about before obviously um when you see that happening how do you try to how do you approach that as a coach I’d imagine you don’t want to just keep doing the exact

Same thing like how do you try to change up the way that you’re approaching it if it doesn’t seem to be um clicking with the guys we went from you go from a blitz you you go to a blitz you try to change Personnel on the ball um you even

Try to change personnel with the screener you go you you know you play your normal coverage um the only thing we probably didn’t do was play zone tonight you know um could we have played Zone maybe but the the way that our effort was tonight defensively that wasn’t good enough to

Warrant me to say hey let’s play some Zone against these guys coach Brown that uh second quarter uh when uh Detroit scored 39 points Kings scored 27 uh what do you think went wrong with their uh with the kings in in in that u in that quarter because

They did have 36 points in then which is like a A flipflop in the second quarter so what do you what do you think it went South at in the second quarter yeah I I think there was a stretch there was a in the it was the last three

Minutes I think they scored 15 points in the last three minutes and it was because uh either we turn the ball over uh or they were just getting out and running and our transition defense was really poor uh and then you know again we were half a step slow with

Everything we tried to do and they did a great job of moving the ball and knocking down open shots when they had the opportunity but that 15 that that 15 points in the last three minutes in my opinion was we didn’t close the quarter like we should have we always tell our

Guys close the quarter close the quarter right way close the quarter with a sense of urgency and Detroit had their way with us in the last three minutes and that’s why they ended up with 36 or 39 whatever 39 points in the in the second

Domantas Sabonis, De’Aaron Fox & Coach Brown speak to the media following a loss to the Detroit Pistons on February 7, 2024.

0:00 – 1:53 Domantas Sabonis
1:53 – 3:32 De’Aaron Fox
3:32 – 15:15 Coach Brown

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