Magic 126, Wizards 109
Q. What did you feel the key difference was in tonight's game?
BRIAN KEEFE: I mean, we had a good first half, I thought. Didn't start off great, and then I loved when our bench unit came in and gave us a little spark. We were able to get to the paint. I liked our physicality. Led to a little bit of free throws in the first half, but too easy in the paint to start the third, and then that kind of opened up some of their shooting after that.
But really was their paint attacks early in that third quarter, just getting to the rim, attacking us, and then they made some threes, and that really was the difference.
Q. Your team unfortunately had nine turnovers. Not a typical night for your team. What happened there? Was that more what the other team did or what your guys didn't do?
BRIAN KEEFE: You know, I thought we were in the right spots in the first half. I thought we were aggressive. We did get a little bit in foul trouble, and that probably led to us maybe not being as aggressive as we could have been. Sometimes you're going to have to live with some of that stuff. That probably led to the lack of turnovers tonight for us, and that's something we've been pretty good at. We came off a game last night where we had a high turnover for the opponent, something we've been stressing.
Credit to them. You've always got to give credit to them with their ball security, but also part of it was us, too.
Q. What have you seen from Juju after two games?
BRIAN KEEFE: I think I said it last night: Super solid. He's just learning our system, and he's done really well with that. Give the coaches credit and him for studying that stuff. We can run our offense through him. You can see his passing ability. He's big. He's physical. He's a good rebounder. I think he's giving us some good minutes here.
Q. Do you feel their physicality kind of took Tre and Will out of what they maybe have been able to do here of late with the ball in their hand?
BRIAN KEEFE: Yeah, it's hard to say on that stuff. But yeah, there was a wear-down effect sometimes on some of those things for sure. When we were moving the ball and attacking, they were switching some stuff, so then when we were able to get some ball movement and get into the paint and attack - that's what we did in the first half - I didn't think we did that, as well, and of course we were taking the ball out a little bit of the net the second half against that defense, too.
Q. It's easy to make excuses, and I know that's not something you've ever wanted to do. But the resiliency that the guys still showed, undermanned, undersized, potentially tired just with the sheer number of games they've played the last few days, and then traveling here, what does that say about their want-to, their competitiveness, to still want to go out there and play the way they did, even though the game kind of got out of hand?
BRIAN KEEFE: Yeah, we'll never use that lack of bodies or scheduling, any of that stuff. We never even talk about that stuff.
But I'm proud of our guys always, the fight that they have, the togetherness. They stick together when things aren't going well. Those are the things I always look at. It's not always going to be perfect in this league, and our guys are sticking together through some -- when things aren't going well in the game and then fighting through that, which is good.
Q. You've got these guys again in about nine days. Anything you can take from this game into that upcoming matchup?
BRIAN KEEFE: Probably going to have to look at some of the film on that. We've got a little bit of time. Obviously some games in between that. But we'll be ready next time for sure.
FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports