What Jamahl Mosley, Paolo Banchero Said After Magic's 40-Point Loss to Cavaliers

ORLANDO, Fla. – After the Orlando Magic's lopsided 40-point loss to the Cleveland Cavaliers on Tuesday evening, Magic coach Jamahl Mosley and forward Paolo Banchero met reporters to discuss the outcome.

More: East-leading Cavaliers bury Magic behind 19 triples

Below is a partial transcript and full video of each player's availability:

Jamahl Mosley

“I’ll answer the questions by a statement. First, I’ll tell you about Cole [Anthony], hyper extended left knee, we’ll re-evaluate him tomorrow and see how he feels. There is no rhyme or reason, we got our butts kicked. You give Cleveland a ton of credit for how they’re playing and what they’re doing. We didn’t play our style of basketball. We’ll look at it, we’ll practice hard tomorrow and get back to work. That’s what we know and that’s what’s going to help us figure out some of these lulls and some of these situations and we’ll go from there.”

On the importance of getting back to playing their brand of basketball...

“That’s what we’ll do. We’ll practice tomorrow, we’ll get after it, we’ll compete, and we’ll figure out how we get a game on Thursday. But tomorrow’s going to be a practice that we get after it, and we understand exactly what we need to do, getting back to the basics, back to the fundamentals, a simple, physical, aggressive style of Orlando Magic basketball that we need to play. Again, I give them a ton of credit for being the hottest team in the NBA right now and how they’re playing and there’s a reason why they are where they are. They shot the lights out and they took advantage of everything.”

On the 19-5 3-point disparity and how tough it was to overcome...

“More impossible. It’s more impossible than 17 to five. It’s 19 to five even more so. Listen, you give them credit. There's a lot of ways we can look at this and there’s a lot of ways we can discuss it, and we can go back and forth, and I do appreciate it that we ask the questions and try to figure out what the problem is. Again, give them credit for being where they are right now and how hard they play and what they did, and they knocked down shots. You have to give them credit for that, for being the best team in the NBA for a reason. And then it’s about us and how we continue to go back to playing exactly how we need to play because we were playing good basketball. Tonight was not an indicator of that, but now we go to work tomorrow and figure out exactly how we get to that consistently.”

On how he’s evaluating this loss...

“Probably a lot of the reason why I said what I said in the initial statement. Like there’s a lot of things you can look at and I’m not going to jump and overreact and run to a lot of things. But I know that the way in which you get back to playing your brand of basketball is you get to work. You get in the gym, you go after it, you play, you practice, you get after each other, you communicate, you talk and there you go. And then you find your way back through it because it’s not going to fix itself in these moments. Again, you have to give them credit and then you have to look at what we need to do, so we’re going to focus on us tomorrow.

Paolo Banchero

On the reasons behind tonight’s struggles as a team...

“I mean, we went down 20+ (points) in the first quarter. To put yourself in a hole like that, against a team like that... you’re not going to win.”

On how difficult it is to keep up with a team, when the Magic are struggling to create offense...

“I mean, you know coming in that they’re a high-powered offense. They shoot a lot of threes. They have a lot of shooters and so it’s not like we didn’t know who is out there on the floor. They just outplayed us.”

On the reasons why the Magic did not win tonight...

“Everything. Like I said, we went down 20+ (points) in the first quarter. They jumped on us. We weren’t organized. We were taking too long to set our offense. We weren’t communicating. We just weren’t sharp at all.”

On the team’s psyche in the locker room...

“I don’t know. You have to ask everybody else. I mean, obviously, it’s an embarrassing game, you know? Yeah, I mean, we got ran off the floor. Simple as that.”

On the team’s injuries and how he is feeling physically in his own recovery...

“Yeah, I'm feeling good. I'm feeling better every game. I feel like my legs are getting back. I’m getting more confident. Injuries are tough but it’s a part of basketball. Every team deals with it. Like I said, you can’t point to injuries or [any] one thing. At the end of the day, you’ve got five guys out there that’s on the court and so we have to figure it out.”

On what he can do as a leader to lift the team up...

“I would say just keep showing up, you know? Going about my work, being a good teammate, [and] you know, all of the little things. Like I said, we have to challenge each other. Guys have to be pissed off by this, everyone needs to be pissed off by this and it’s got to change. You know, we can’t just keep saying it. Something has to change.”

Up Next

The Magic's seven-game homestand continues at 7 p.m. Thursday against the Golden State Warriors.

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