Jazz 128, Wizards 112
Q. What did you like about that game and what did you dislike?
BRIAN KEEFE: I thought actually we really shared the ball and played the right way. We didn't hit the threes that we've been normally making. I think we hit eight in the first half. I think we were shooting 81% almost three-quarters of the way through the first quarter. We started off shooting the ball really well.
It kind of dropped after that. I think we only ended up making four threes in the second half. But I liked our ball movement. Some of those threes led to some transition and some different things like that.
I thought the ball movement was good tonight. The guys tried to play the right way.
Q. What did you see or learn from the Vukevic-Sarr pairing?
BRIAN KEEFE: That's pretty good. They knew how to space with each other. One would sometimes run to the trail spot, one to the corner. They could cross-match defensively in transition.
Really the first time. We saw that a little bit in Toronto last week, we saw that lineup. But they're both skillful bigs. They kind of figure out the spacing with each other, which sometimes can be tough. I liked it. I thought it was pretty good.
Q. Who plays more of the four and more of the type of?
BRIAN KEEFE: We usually have Alex playing the five. Like I just said, they can kind of get cross-matched in transition. Tristan can cover. Alex can work on the perimeter roaming.
We like to have Alex around that rim, if there was a rolling big, which they start the game with. We can try some different things, but I liked what I saw out there. We'll see more of that.
Q. Your team got in a bit of striking distance in the fourth. Why not go back to Jordan and more of your starters?
BRIAN KEEFE: Want to see those guys in those environments, what they're going to do. I thought we made a nice little push. We got three straight turnovers that led to runouts.
Those guys don't always get the opportunity to play when it's in the crunch. I want to see how those guys respond to that, how they can execute things that we were doing out of the timeouts. We were always learning. I thought those guys did some good things at the end. As I said, we just didn't shoot the ball well in the second half?
Q. Colby, what did you think?
BRIAN KEEFE: He was great. Aggressive. Downhill. I liked his defense, his ball pressure. He's kind of a combo guard that can do a little bit of everything. But we are still learning.
I liked his aggressiveness, and I thought he was attacking, which is what we wanted him to do and he was good at tonight.
Q. His shot selection seemed organic. Only missed two shots. For a guy that young, how impressive can that be with a new offense?
BRIAN KEEFE: I think it's kind of what we're building. He's played down with our G League. We've talked about this before. This is how we want to play. Take good shots, you play the right way, we play with ball movement.
I think that when those guys step up into these situations, it's not any different. They can just transition really quickly. He obviously had more opportunity tonight and he took advantage of it.
Kudos to him for that.
Q. What is it about the defensive deflections that you guys are in the right kind of angles?
BRIAN KEEFE: I think that's something that has been growing definitely since the All-Star break, even dating like back to February 1st.
Our activity being in the right spots, I think just our habits are better. Now we're being more aggressive in those situations. That leads to physicality, turnovers.
I think there's confidence in what we're doing and it leads to that. Everybody is being able to accomplish that, which is great.
Q. Throw out a few different combinations, players, experiment a little, what is that like as a coaching staff?
BRIAN KEEFE: For us, we're a staff that's built on how can we get our guys better. That's not just five guys. We have 18 guys on the roster. We have a staff I'm really lucky to be surrounded with, plus our Go-Go staff which is about developing. We develop everybody. That's really a big deal to us. That goes to our older, older guys, to our 19-year-olds, and a guy like AJ, who is new. We take a lot of pride in that. We want these guys to get opportunities because we want them to improve and we want to see what they can do.
I think everybody that comes into our place, we talked about Justin before the game, is going to get an opportunity to show what they can do and get a good infrastructure behind them. I think that stuff is really important for the growth of our organization.
Q. Rebounding has been an emphasis. You have the offensive rebounding advantage. Second-chance points. What allowed you to have the right angles on the offensive floors tonight?
BRIAN KEEFE: I think it was some of the shots we were taking. We were able to get in the paint. When you have more paint shots at times that can lead to more offensive rebounds. We have some guys, JT is a good offensive rebounder. Sometimes it's personal based. You saw some guys do some good stuff with that tonight sure.
Q. Alex, what have you seen from him as he gets more and more comfortable?
BRIAN KEEFE: I think that's the word. He's just getting more comfortable with what we're doing, the overall sense of the NBA game. Obviously he's making shots, but it's more than that. He's taking the right ones, reading the game well, the flow of the game. He's getting better. That's what this is all about for us. So it's good.
Q. (Indiscernible) more efficient as the season has gone on?
BRIAN KEEFE: Yeah, for sure. Threes tonight. He has a threat to do a little bit of everything. When you're a stretch guy like that, he can roll, he can pop, he can play-make out of both situations, popping and rolling. It poses a grid threat. This is why we have him.
FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports