Darko Rajaković — Post-Game Breakdown After 121–113 Loss to Celtics

“They were not the same guys. Energy was different. Urgency was different. A couple of other guys stepped up in the second half and helped us. In this league, you cannot take anything for granted. Every single night is a new opportunity to compete and prove yourself. What happened yesterday, good or bad, nobody cares about that. It’s all about that moment and how you compete. I’m demanding more urgency from the whole team. Demanding more scrappiness. Because when we do that like we did in the second half, we’re a completely different team and we can compete with any team in this league. We just have to do that over the course of 48 minutes. It cannot be just one half.”

“How to do that is to energize. Everybody needs to know they need to step up and help the team because we need every single player to step on the floor and contribute. We know how to get there. We’re going to work on that and we’ll get there.”

“Absolutely. That’s what we talked about early in the season — all of those guys are very important for us and we trust and believe in all of them. They’re going to get opportunities. Jamal Shead got his opportunities. AJ, Alijah stepped on the floor tonight. Chucky, he’s going to be there. Everybody can have opportunity. They just need to work very hard and be ready for the moment.”

“They’re a really good team because of their ability to shoot the ball from the three-point line, but at the same time they’re very good creators and all of those guys can get to the rim. So if you go under in pick and roll, they’re going to shoot it. If you go over, you open up drives. Everything starts on the ball. What we did in the second half was much better on-ball defense that negated some pick and rolls and downhill drives and helped us with closeouts. They’re elite in pick and rolls and elite three-point shooting. They create that through simple pick-and-roll action and simple passes to create closeouts. They’re a really hard matchup, and I’m glad that in the second half we found a way to do that and we can show our guys what it looks like.”

“We all know who RJ is and what he brings to the table for us. He’s a very important player for us offensively. But I don’t want to look at it that way. He’s not here — we have to figure it out. We have a more than capable team. We have a lot of talent. We have a lot of young guys that need to step up and improve in this stretch. Different players are getting opportunities now. It was really good to see Ochai — he came back with really good pop on the defensive end and helped us on offense as well. There was some very positive stuff tonight and I think from here we’re going to be trending upwards.”

“There is an idea going into the game about how you would wish to distribute minutes on paper, but at the end of the day I want to see the game. And I want to see how the guys are performing. It’s good for them and good for their development knowing that if they don’t do well, if they don’t perform, somebody else will be there and get the opportunity. I think that’s fair. When you have a roster of 14 players plus three two-ways, that’s 17 players. We believe and trust in all of those guys. Nobody’s going to have a perfect night every night. It’s about how we pick each other up and find ways to be competitive every night.”

“When he’s like this, like he was in the second half tonight, that’s Jamal. He’s really making the difference for us. We need to see more of him being that type of player.”