Friday night in Washington, the Wizards lost 101-88 to the Toronto Raptors. Washington is now 14-16 for the season. Here’s what various Wizards and Raptors said after the game:
WIZARDS HEAD COACH RANDY WITTMAN
On the team’s effort:
“[I was] shocked probably more than surprised. Being a game where they are a half-game ahead of you in the standings, being a home game, “shocked” would be a better word. [It was] very disappointing. And we can’t play that way. We’ve proven over the last couple of years you can’t play that way. And we’re getting concerned with, ‘Why am I coming out? How many minutes am I getting? How many shots am I getting?’ rather than, ‘What is the team doing?’ and we didn’t do that tonight and that is disappointing because we’re not good enough to do it that way. For us to come out and start the game, and start the fourth quarter like that is disappointing. I don’t know how else to put it. We have to come back together. It is not about ‘me’ it’s about ‘us’ and it has to be focused on us and it was focused on individuals rather than the team tonight.”
On Trevor Ariza being ejected:
“No, I never think the game is over, 13 points in this league is not over. I still felt it. It was a sequence there when the guys finished the game. If we could have made that open three to knock it to 13 when they were bringing [Kyle] Lowry and those guys back in, you never know in this league and there was plenty of time left at the time that [Trevor] Ariza was thrown out.”
On getting his message across to the players:
“I’ll figure something out. We’ll get it one way or the other. Listen, it’s like I’ve said the last year and a half to two years, it’s been proven that way. We don’t have one guy who can carry this team. We don’t have it. So we need the body of work each and every night. That body of work changes. Those numbers change who that guy is. We’ve seen that when we’ve been playing good. Bradley Beal can be it, Martell Webster can and Trevor Ariza can. You can’t dictate the game yourself and make it play out the way you are. You’ve got to let the game dictate that and then be willing to do that. They’re going to take me away tonight? You’re going to be the bonus baby tonight. We’re going to feed you tonight. We’ve got to do that and we didn’t have that tonight.”
WIZARDS GUARD BRADLEY BEAL
On the game:
“They were more aggressive than us. They got off to a great start, 19-8 to begin the quarter. That’s something we got stay away from. We can’t get down by such big leads because we waste all our energy trying to fight back and don’t have enough to be able to pull through. We got to stay out of those situations and be better mentally, focus, and be ready for the next game.”
On Coach Wittman’s comments about selfish basketball:
“I guess what he was talking about was body language and attitude, more so than guys not passing the ball, at least that’s what I interpreted they were saying. I mean you can sense it here and there, but I still think we had a chance to win the game regardless of what our attitude was. He’s right, that’s definitely something we have to stay away from and hopefully moving forward we can eliminate that. Like he said, we lost a couple of games that were winnable. We got to get back on the right track.”
On the effort during the game:
“I mean we are at home. You would think we would play a lot harder, especially having the home crowd behind you. As you start to have more and more fans come and support you, you would think you would come out harder. We were real sluggish tonight. We weren’t there mentally or physically. We weren’t paying attention to our concepts. We got to give credit to them, they made a lot of shots and a lot of good plays as well.”
WIZARDS FORWARD NENE
On the game:
“I don’t think there is much explanation. They kicked our butt. They play hard. They exploited our weakness and they’ve been playing really good on the road. Not much to say.”
On Toronto’s ball movement:
“Missing on defense. We didn’t play the right way. We’ve been playing like that the past couple games. We need to get back to the way we’ve been playing.”
On playing the right way:
“I think we need to watch more video, the good things, what are our openings (weaknesses). Find the things. Get back to the way we’ve been playing, with each other, communicate better, like you said, the defense starts on your person. We need to play harder. The last few games our openings (weaknesses) have been we didn’t play hard enough. This game is simple and it is very fair sometimes.”
On the third quarter:
“We need to start better on the third quarter. That’s the moment a lot of teams go really hard. They open a lot of points on the board right there. If you let the team get that kind of confidence you start to stop.”
WIZARDS GUARD JOHN WALL
On if there’s any selfish play:
“I don’t think so, I think we try and play the right way. I just give them a lot of credit, they took away things from us and then we didn’t make a lot of shots. They just outplayed us tonight. They played with more sense of urgency. They played with more aggressiveness, they were pounding us on the glass and making open shots and we didn’t stick to our defensive concepts and we just give them a lot of credit for what they did and the game plan they had against us.”
On the reason for the loss:
“Not having a sense of urgency from the start of the game. They got a big lead early, I think 18-9. And we fought our way back at halftime and got it down to three and then that third quarter, turnover after turnover and I give Brad [Beal] credit for hustling down and getting the block in and then they got another turnover, hit another three so they basically just had control of the game.”
On making improvements:
“Gotta keep working, gotta find a way to fix it and stop having those lapses of times when you’re not playing good for a quarter or a half and we’re not good enough to play that way and we’re not good enough to have one person try to do it by their self.”
On a team effort:
“Anybody can get hot and start scoring at any time on this team. We’re a team where we’re better when there’s five to six guys in double figures and you might have a different leading scorer every night and we know that’s the way we need to play and there’s nothing wrong with that. We know guys can make big shots and make big plays, but we don’t have one guy that we can put our back on and say, ‘Do that for a whole game.’”
On the Raptors:
“Tonight, you just give them a lot of credit for doing what they had to do and playing the right way and watching film on us and changing their game plan. And you give them a lot of credit for making shots. They made a lot of big shots and tough shots and when a team’s been on a hot streak like that, you’ve got to give them credit.”
RAPTORS HEAD COACH DWANE CASEY
On possibly looking past the Wizards to focus on Miami:
“We have no right. None whatsoever to look past anybody in this league. This team is just as talented as we are and we have no right to look forward to Miami, Indiana, whoever.”
On the Raptors’ second half performance:
“The thing I was upset about was our defense. We gave up points in transition, weren’t getting back, weren’t executing our plans we had for their fast break, and that was the whole thing. We started to do that in the third quarter. We did a good job. Again 29 assists, we got the ball moving, the ball was zinging around and we got it moving.”
On being a successful team with no prominent stars:
“They are playing the game the right way. They’re playing together. They’re trusting each other, nobody has an ego that thinks they have to have X number of shots. Come out of the game when your rotation ends. When one guy is down the next guy picks him up. Everybody is cheering for each other. I think the word ‘team’ is really important for us. If we don’t do what we have to do as a team, offensively and defensively, you see what happened there in the fourth quarter, you lose a big lead. We got to continue to play as a team. We got to play as a team cause like you said we are not going to ‘out-talent’ too many teams.”
RAPTORS GUARD DEMAR DEROZAN
On the Raptors performance:
“Besides the winning, it just feels good. We’re just all playing together. I think you can tell we just go out there and have fun, we’re playing with one another. You can tell, we don’t care who scores, we don’t care who scores the ball, we’re just giving everybody confidence every time on both ends. That’s the fun part about it.”
On team’s focusing on him:
“I definitely see it being in the middle of it, and I understand it. I go out there when my team needs me to score or do something offensively, I’m there, but other than that, I try to be a decoy as much as I can to get my team going. I understand teams are going to focus in on me, try to slow me down sometimes. Sometimes I do a lot moves and create shots for my other teammates it makes it fun that way. ”
On the Raptors recent wins:
“It’s definitely strong. We all understand we got a lot more basketball to play. This is nothing right now. We have to understand once adversity hits, things not going our way, shots not falling, we still got to stay together with the same mindset. I think we’re at a point where we really understand that and we got to do. If we continue to work hard on the court and outside the court, I think we’ll be fine.”
RAPTORS GUARD KYLE LOWRY
On having a winning record without big names:
“I think we have workers. We have guys who just go out and do what it takes to win, that want to win games, take advantage of every situation that they are in, and they work extremely hard. We have very unselfish guys, and we are just staying the course and just trying to play games.”
On guarding Bradley Beal and John Wall:
“We made Bradley Beal take tough shots, and we blitzed him all night, and made John take contested shots. That is all we can do with those guys, and I think everyone tonight just played a great team game.”
On making the extra pass:
“I think guys are just working to win. Winning is contagious, and we are making winning plays and that is what everyone is.”
