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Thoughts on the game...
First off, if we allow a team to shoot 47 per cent and get 26 fast break points and out rebound us by 13, we are going to lose a lot of games. From a defensive standpoint, what we've been talking about all season long, all preseason and all training camp, is defending. Tonight we didn't do a very good job, we didn't trust each other, we didn't play together on the defensive end as well as the offensive end. Our defense has to be our staple and that is something that we failed to do tonight.
Did your team lack effort and energy?
Well, I thought they outplayed us. I thought they played harder than we did. I thought they wanted it a whole lot more than we did. That's all it is, just effort and energy. Our biggest thing is communication on the defensive end and like I said, we didn't' do a very good job at all defensively and that is something that we have got to continue to work at.
Could it be because you were down two starters and J.J. (Hickson) was in foul trouble early?
No excuses. We had five guys out there in wine and gold and they had five guys out there in white and red. No excuses.
Is this just part of the growing process that you are going to have to go through?
I do understand that it is a process that we still do have. It is only the second game of the season, we still have a long way to go and I have said that from day one, on both ends of the floor. Again, we still have got to get to the point where we trust each other on every single thing that we are doing, especially defensively. So it's not back to the drawing board, it's just showing guys on tape. We can do a whole lot better and I have seen us do a whole lot better.
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Me and my teammates are competitors. We don't like losing and I didn't feel too good (about the loss) especially when they scored at the end. It's part of the league, you win some and you lose some but it's how you lose and I think we didn't come out to play tonight.
Are there any positives out of tonight's game?
It's hard to take any positives. The only thing that we could look at that was positive is that when you get a big win you have got to stay focused night in and night out because the next team is going to look at that and they are going to want to beat us and they are going to want to play even harder. I think that is what they (Raptors) did and they wanted that game.
RAPTORS HEAD COACH JAY TRIANO
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I think we were contesting very well, they hit a couple three's late in the game there, but I thought we contested real well and our aggressiveness defensively was pretty good. We didn't make it easy for them to run their offense and that's what we try to do and hopefully that contributes to them not shooting the ball well.
Thoughts on rebounding performance...
You know there was a stretch where they started to come back and it was because they were getting second chance points. We needed the guards to come in too; if we can't rely on our bigs, guards like [Linus] Kleiza and Sonny Weems came in and helped us rebound a bit and when that happens that helps us because sometimes the bigs get pushed under the basket.
In that third quarter, Linus Kleiza took 10 field goal attempts where he made six or seven, saw a matchup of Jamario Moon. Did he just go at him? Linus (Kleiza), like I said from the beginning, he's a guy that can play with his back to the basket. He hit a couple early and then Sonny (Weems) came in and Sonny played well. So we wanted to see if we could get Linus going again, and we got him in a post-up and it seemed to work so we just kept going back at it. He's good with his back to the basket and he's good facing up, so we were able to exploit that.
Thoughts on Jose Calderon...
I think he is struggling with his shot right now but he still ran the team and I thought he was really good, especially in the third quarter. He came in and I thought his defense was great, I thought all night long he had pretty good pressure. You know people sometimes go after him a little bit, but he chased all night and put a lot of pressure on again.
REGGIE EVANS
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It was just a good effort throughout the whole game, defensively. It was crazy because our defence overshadowed our offence. In the past, it's strictly been a lot of offence. I think our defence kind of sustained throughout the whole game and it really showed and carried on to the offence. We got some easy transitions buckets. It was a good feeling, the defensive end really won the game for us.
On the help defence seems to be coming around...
Communication. We have to continue to do that, it's got to be contagious. One time we helped out, and we helped and then we didn't help, so every night we may have to help out three or four times, a player may have to rotate to an odd position. Today was just a great game. We just have to be able to go to the west coast, take it one game at a time, look at the drawing board and see what Sacramento has.
LINAS KLEIZA
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I feel we did a very good job, defensively. We established ourselves early, we took them out of their stuff and that was the difference. Going back to the New York game I thought we did a good job defensively too, we just couldn't make shots. When you can't make shots you put a lot of pressure on your defence. Today we were able to knock some shots down, get a lead and we played well from there.
On what you were able to do today offensively...
It felt great. Coach called a couple of plays for me in the post and I was able to make some shots and we kind of kept going like that for a little bit. Guys did a great job of finding me today and I was able to knock them in.