TRAIL BLAZERS GUARD DAMAN LILLARD:
ON WHAT THEM GETTING OUT-HUSTLED IN TWO OF THE LAST FOUR GAMES MEANS ABOUT THIS TEAM
“I think when you say out-hustle, it looks like [other teams] are playing harder than we are. But they’ve had that little bit of extra [energy] more times than we had and I just think we didn’t have it [tonight]. [The Kings] had it a little more than we did. Instead of us making sure we got rebounds, it seemed like they had that extra bounce and they went after it. Those 50-50 situations, it seemed like they had a number of them and we just had a few of them.”
ON THE TEAM BEING KNOWN AS ONE THAT USUALLY OUT-HUSTLES OPPONENTS
“Yeah, I mean we’re playing hard. I think it’s just when certain situations present themselves and it’s going to change the tide or momentum of the game, those are the ones we have to have. One of them came late. The ball came off the rim, I peeked at my man and I assumed that [Shabazz Napier] was going to get it, but he timed his jump early and I let the ball get over my head and they got another possession and I think they scored on that possession. So, just stuff like that, they didn’t care if somebody looked like they had it already, they just went after it and ended up with another possession. There were too many situations like that.”
ON THE OFFENSE 15 GAMES INTO THE SEASON STILL NOT BEING THERE
“Still a little slow, yeah. I’m not sure – I’m really not sure. I think this is new, we haven’t had a good rhythm and flow to our offense and it might sound crazy, but I’m really not concerned. It doesn’t concern me because we’ve always been a good offensive team and it changes us improving on the defensive end. I just have faith that the offense is going to come around. We haven’t just had bad offensive games every game, we’ve had some good offensive games it just hasn’t been consistent. But we haven’t been very consistent as far as playing a complete game yet this season either so that goes along with it.”
ON WHAT THEY NEED TO DO TO GET THE GAME AGAINST THE KINGS TOMORROW
“We’ve got to tighten up. Once again, I don’t think it was a bad showing. When you’re in a position like that where you have an opportunity to be going home 9-6 playing against them on our home floor with a chance to be 10-6 going into this road trip, in our minds we have to take ourselves to that next level. We have to come in here and get this done and we just didn’t get it done [tonight].