Thunder 136, Wizards 95
Q. When Kuz struggles to shoot from the field, does that put pressure on the rest of the team just mentally knowing they have to take up the slack?
COREY KISPERT: Those guys are our scorers, but everybody has bad nights and good nights, and it's up to us to kind of play the way we play no matter what, and that's how basketball goes. You're going to have good nights and bad nights, and if those guys have bad nights, sometimes that just happens. That's not a product of anything else except for just the way basketball goes.
Q. There was no disparity really but both teams shot a ton of free throws. What was kind of game was that like when both teams --
COREY KISPERT: Slow. Slow. You feel it as a player. You kind of check your imaginary watch, and it disrupts your rhythm. But that's kind of the way both teams are wanting to play. Oklahoma City plays that way, and we tried to play the same way they do on defense, wanting to be handsy and disruptive and a lot of times that leads to fouls. That sometimes just happens when you try to play the way that we're trying to play.
Q. BK doesn't usually criticize the team in his postgame comments. This is now the second game in a row where he's been pretty harsh in his assessment of you guys' game. What do you have to do to right the ship, and how do you want to respond from comments like that?
COREY KISPERT: Yeah, you definitely want to respond to them, and we deserve to be criticized by him. It's not like we're all pointing fingers in different directions. This one was definitely on us as players. Credit to him; he takes a lot of criticism and deflects a lot of praise, and oftentimes that's not fair because we play and he doesn't, and it's our job to be way better than we were tonight. The way we played, the way we got our ass beat on every single facet of the game by those guys is completely unacceptable. We can't have that again. He's right to criticize us tonight, and as men we have to look at ourselves and we've got to look at each other as players and teammates to just flat-out be better.
Q. In a game like today where you talk about every aspect of the game is tilted in their favor pretty heavily, what has to go wrong for that to happen?
COREY KISPERT: I mean, where do I start? It's kind of how you -- it starts from how you come to the gym prepared to play. You let their best players kind of get going, there's kind of a rhythm and a vibe to the team. Different teams -- I feel like a team like that can get comfortable really fast and start making a bunch of shots. They made a ton of mid-range shots today, which is kind of what you want to force as a defense. Stuff gets out of hand quick when you let teams play comfortable, in this league with as many good players as we have. It doesn't take much to get a team rolling, and we kind of let them get rolling tonight.
Q. BK was critical of you guys' preparation on defense and attention to detail in the Chicago game. Was that a similar issue tonight, and what does that really mean? When he talks about a lack of preparation --
COREY KISPERT: No, I didn't feel that way. Honestly, I felt like we forced a lot of shots that we didn't want to force. There were definitely some mistakes and slip-ups, but it was definitely more detail tonight, and with a player like Shai, that's kind of the person that you focus on, and it trickles down from there, and I felt like we as a whole did a much better job prepping that.
Like I said, whether you prep or not, there's really good players in this league, and if they start making shots, it's really tough to fight back.
Q. One of the things that BK said postgame was actually self-criticism. He said I didn't have the team ready to play 48 minutes. He said you guys played about eight minutes tonight. There was a large margin of defeat, but did you see any fight from the Wizards in the second half?
COREY KISPERT: Yeah, a little bit. I saw fight from certain guys, and definitely the guys that came in at the end of the game, they fought, too. That's one of the hardest things to do in all of sports is to not play for multiple games in a row or a game and come in and play your ass off, and the credit goes to those guys for doing that because it would be very easy to let that slip. Again, tonight is a night where we just needed to be better. That's kind of the moral of the story, in all facets, including that one.
Q. You've got Anthony Edwards and the Timberwolves tomorrow night. How do you reset mentally with such a short gap?
COREY KISPERT: You've got to wash all the negative emotions out in the shower and try to get a good night's sleep and come back ready to play. That's the nature of the league. That's what we're trained to do is to continue to play games no matter what happens. Minnesota is a different beast than Oklahoma City. They do a lot of things differently. We'll definitely be ready to play tomorrow, come out ready to play, and the scouting report is different. Everything is different. I expect a total wash from us and kind of come back from clean minds tomorrow.
FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports