LA Lakers 111, Washington Wizards 88
Q. How do you think your team played tonight?
BRIAN KEEFE: Not consistent. I think that's the word I would use. There were some good stretches where we did the right things and we ended up having a pretty good defensive rating for the game.
I thought there were good stretches when we had good ball movement and we did the right thing, the right process. Some of that we didn't make the shots and some of that process, which I never have any problem with.
Then we had some mistakes on both ends when we weren't organized or didn't execute the game plan. We just were inconsistent is the word tonight.
Q. When you look at the way Alex kind of started the game and progressed in a positive way, especially with the matchup with Anthony Davis, what did you think of the way he handled that?
BRIAN KEEFE: Thought he was great. Started off a little slow. Look, our whole team. He wasn't the only one, and then he got really into the game. Obviously the shot blocking we say. I think he had four in the first half, five total.
And then just his activity was great. So thought he really progressed as the game went along.
Q. Seemed like he faded away a little bit more than in recent games. How much of that do you think was just how good of a defender Anthony Davis is?
BRIAN KEEFE: Hard to gauge those things. I have no idea.
Q. What went into the thought process of putting Kuzma on LeBron rather than Bilal?
BRIAN KEEFE: Size, coverage things. We could switch some of the pick-and-rolls. Just some of those things we were doing scheme-wise. I thought that stuff actually was fine.
Q. He played extremely aggressively, Bilal did, driving a lot. What did you think of his offensive game?
BRIAN KEEFE: Got downhill, got to the rim, made good plays, was on the board. I thought his activity level was good tonight. It was good to see him play well.
Q. Do you think that having a slightly less defensive responsibility and not going against the best perimeter player helped him put more that energy towards the offensive end?
BRIAN KEEFE: Actually interesting, Reaves handles the ball more than James in pick-and-rolls. We actually put it on the guy that handled the ball the most. That's the reason we did that tonight.
Q. How have you seen Jordan try to lead the group during adversities like tonight?
BRIAN KEEFE: He's been terrific with all that stuff. You know, it's not just the games. It's what we see every day, the work, the stuff does, the building the confidence.
And in the games he give our guys confidence, his ability to make plays, attack, get himself shots, and also give other guys confidence guy finding shots for others.
All that stuff has been tremendous this year. He's been great with that.
Q. You have two French players, two top 10 draft picks.
BRIAN KEEFE: Yeah.
Q. You've been coaching almost 20 years in the NBA. How you say the look at French players have evolved within the NBA?
BRIAN KEEFE: Yeah.
Q. How would you define the evolution of the way they're perceived, if they're perceived differently than 20 years ago?
BRIAN KEEFE: When I first started, you might not know my history, but I was with Tony Parker, so I've been around some of those guys my whole career pretty much.
So, they're just carrying on the tradition of some of guys they had, like Tony and Boris and some of those guys from the older generation that ended up winning a European championship.
You are seeing a huge influx of French players coming into the NBA, but we have two guys we're thrilled to have. They have been tremendous and we are really lucky to have them.
Q. Would you say there is some type of qualities and skills that you know when you have a French player -- for long time talking about their defense. Usually they are not the biggest scorers in the NBA, the French players, is there some quality with the French players you think okay because he's been trained there...
BRIAN KEEFE: Yeah, I probably don't have enough knowledge to speak on all that. Good question.
Q. When you look at kind of the building blocks of what you're trying to do with this extended road trip now in its third game, what have you liked from the first one at Golden State to what you saw tonight and how things are trying to move in the right direction?
BRIAN KEEFE: We ended up probably have a good defensive rating tonight, so I thought as the game got into the teeth we showed some competitiveness. Made some good runs. We were resilient.
So those are the things that are always important to me. How you fight adversity. How you handle things. Because ever team is going to make a run in the NBA. We continued to do battle tonight, and those are good strides and we are going to carry those into next game as we continue to improve.
Thanks for joining us, everybody. Safe travels.
FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports