What Steve Clifford Said Following the Hornets' Win Over Boston
Initial takeaways
“We fought. We battled. They hung in there. We had the one time in the first half we were down 15, 16, and we fought our way back. A lot of guys played well. The second half defense was the best we’ve played, and it was a lot of guys, but Gordon Hayward’s defense in the second half was big time stuff. His pick-and-roll defense, his individual defense, and he made a bunch of team plays, too.”
Final play of regulation
“That was a play that Jaylen Brown jumped up, but it was a play for ‘Melo (Ball) to come to the top and actually look for a 3, but then Brown kind of jumped up and took it away. ‘Melo made a good play, went to the open area and he had a clean drive to the basket. That is a tough time defensively in this league – up two, you don’t want to give up the 3 to lose it so guys are less apt to help. You see it a lot down two, you get lanes to drive the ball, but he made a good read just to get there.”
Miles Bridges starting over P.J. Washington
“Just because that’s the way we’re going to do it. P.J. (Washington Jr.) and I have been talking about this ever since Miles came back. He’s still going to play, his minutes won’t change. P.J. will play just as many minutes as he was before, but we have to get to playing groups like we were talking about before the game. They’re going to play together, too. P.J. is all about the team. He’s extremely team-oriented. He grew up in a basketball family. He has no problems, and again, this has been something that’s been discussed since Miles came back. This was not anything that anybody wasn’t planning on.”
LaMelo Ball's recent stretch of games
“He’s playing great. Their defense is about as good as it gets, and he has 36 (points), eight (assists) and nine rebounds. His defense is getting better and better, too. He’s a very talented player, and I don’t know if it shows, but if you watch him in the weight room and look at all the data that they give us, he’s a lot stronger than he was last year. He couldn’t do a lot this summer on the court or conditioning because of his ankle, but he did spend a lot of time in the weight room, and I think that’s paying off. His numbers finishing at the rim, although it’s early, are much better than they have been in the past, and a lot of that is just strength.”
Mark Williams
“It was his best game. I know he had the monster game, but tonight he made more just effort plays than he’s made so far in his two years. Think of the number of offensive rebounds he kept alive, he’d bring it down, not just rebounds in his area. He blitzed tonight well when we needed to do that, and he was good in the drop. He had a lot of juice tonight. Playing every night for the first time, I think people look at him and you’ve got to remember he didn’t play 82 games last year, so some of this is learning on the fly also. I thought that this was by far his best game – his attitude, his intensity, all of it.”
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