Suns 112, Wizards 93
Q. I know one of the things that distinguished this opponent tonight is just how well they turn everybody over. Having said that, what do you think your team could have done a little bit better to mitigate that skill of theirs?
BRIAN KEEFE: Yeah, I thought we actually finished some possessions with some rebounds, then either a quick turnover or they ripped the ball out of our hands. Just a little bit more strength with our ball security. Got to give them credit; this is what they do. They do this to pretty much every team. But we definitely were loose with our ball security tonight.
Q. Seems like Alex's motor is far and away better than it was last year, especially because of his conditioning. Why is it so much better than it was?
BRIAN KEEFE: Some of that's you've got to learn as you go through all the experiences in the league, and that's everything: How to play the schedule, the travel, all of that. But most of it is because of the work he put in in the off-season. Got to give huge credit to that. This guy was in the gym, training, working on his body, and you're seeing the difference.
Q. It seemed like to start the game, you guys had a great level of physicality kind of matching them. When you do have that dip, how do you try to -- how do you want to see the guys get back to getting that physicality, especially when you do notice that you have some positivity coming out of that?
BRIAN KEEFE: Yeah, we had a tough stretch there in the third. Obviously they went on a big run.
Q. Was the physicality down?
BRIAN KEEFE: I thought we responded really well to start the fourth. We went on a run, made them call a time-out. We upped our defense, turned them over a little bit, got out in transition, so that was a good response from our guys. We didn't focus on the negative. We continued to move on to the next possession, and I thought we did a good job of responding in the fourth quarter.
Q. It seemed like, at least in the second half, you guys were trying to make a decision on if they're going to shoot three-pointers, we're going to at least have a better contest on them. Did you feel like first half versus second half, your contest of the three-point shooting from them was much better?
BRIAN KEEFE: Yeah, I thought our overall force was good. We were on shooters. We were on bodies. I thought they got too many uncontested ones in the first that we weren't happy with.
Guys made the adjustments at halftime. We showed some film on that. But the turnovers and the offensive rebounds, those were the problems. Loose balls, 50/50s, that was part of it.
Q. Given that Phoenix isn't the tallest team, were you disappointed that you guys didn't get more bodies on them?
BRIAN KEEFE: It wasn't just straight rebounding. It was more like we sometimes -- I would say there was probably 10 points of loss where we had the ball and quickly gave it back or was a loose ball that they got. It wasn't just straight rebounding, I thought. It was a little bit of 50/50 battles that we lost. Something we're going to look at. We've been a little bit better with that lately, but they're a good crashing team. That's one of the things that they do well, also.
FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports