Pistons 124, Wizards 104
Q. What did they do defensively to make things tough for you guys today?
BRIAN KEEFE: They're a good defensive team. Give them credit; they can keep going sides of the court, keep going one side of the court, keep the ball moving low. Good physical team. But we scored in the second quarter. So we did score, but we just didn't keep consistent in our defense I thought was the thing. We started off decently but second quarter they got hot and then they continued for the last -- in between quarters, second and third.
Q. Was there something they did that limited you guys on the fast break in particular?
BRIAN KEEFE: That's one of their things. I think they lead the league in limiting transition baskets. They do a great job of that.
Q. I think 27 points off of your team's turnovers. What did you see there? Was it anything unusual tonight?
BRIAN KEEFE: Credit to them, they were making us play in crowds, being physical with us. I thought when we did eventually move the ball, we eventually got good shots, but they won out on the physicality game.
Q. How tough is it given that Malcolm couldn't play a single preseason game, has been hardly practicing, to do what he's asked to do now, to start playing in a regular season game without any benefit of any real 5-on-5?
BRIAN KEEFE: Oh, for sure. I thought his conditioning looked pretty good tonight for a guy who, like you said, has no preseason, no exhibition games, limited practice time. I think he was a plus four tonight in his plus/minus, so he had great impact when he was in the game. You see what he brings to us. He settles us down, gets us good shots, physicality on defense. He'll keep getting better with each game.
Q. Bilal came out a little bit early, went to the locker room --
BRIAN KEEFE: Yeah, got hit with an elbow to his mouth, so I think they were just checking.
Q. So nothing --
BRIAN KEEFE: No update yet. I don't know.
Q. They took 37 threes today, made a really good percentage. What have you thought about your team's three-point defense overall this year?
BRIAN KEEFE: I think we're middle of the pack in terms of what people shoot against us. We let the wrong guys shoot tonight. Beasley was one of the key guys. He got some off early, a couple mistakes we made. But give them credit.
Q. You guys have given up a lot of corner threes in particular this year. What do you think has led to that?
BRIAN KEEFE: A little bit of scramble breakdowns. Sometimes they penetrate your defense and then you're scrambling around. That's probably one of the reasons that's happened.
Q. Do you feel like that happened pretty often tonight?
BRIAN KEEFE: A couple in transition tonight. They got a couple transition threes we gave up. But some of it was just breakdowns in our defense.
Q. A string of a couple of tough consecutive losses here. What have you made of the team's competitiveness over the last couple weeks?
BRIAN KEEFE: I think the one thing that's great for me -- no one wants to lose. We're competitors in our organization. Even tonight we made a run in the fourth. We've shown that we've been able to even in some tough moments gather ourselves, show some resilience, and then we showed that a little bit tonight, and we cut it again. I think it got down to 12 or something, maybe 13. But we've got to be more consistent. That's what we're working on.
FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports