Indiana Pacers 116, Oklahoma City Thunder 107
Q. I believe it was 19 turnovers. How would you characterize those? On the inbound steals from McConnell, what did those plays feel like?
JALEN WILLIAMS: They sucked. Just bad unforced turnovers. Those usually hurt you, especially in these games where there's such high stakes and it's going to be separated by one or two possessions. Those are very controllable turnovers. They resulted in points.
We had control of the game, and those turnovers are the ones where they get back into it, they get the crowd into it. You know what I mean? If we could cut those out, we'll be in good shape.
We had a lot of uncharacteristic turnovers that also lead to touchdowns. Or points, for everybody that doesn't know that reference. But that hurt us tonight, for sure.
Q. Mark said he didn't feel like defensively they changed philosophy, but attack and approach was more forceful. How do you counter that going into 4?
JALEN WILLIAMS: Yeah, they didn't change around too much. They just amped up their pressure. Being at home, you have that juice to do it. We got to meet that same amount of force and exceed it.
Q. You get the pullup at the end of the third. Seemed like a huge shot at the time. What stands out to you about what went wrong after that?
JALEN WILLIAMS: I missed a shot and then I fouled, and they're right back in the game. That's been kind of the same thing. It's kind of the thing I was talking about with the turnovers. This team makes big runs. Those little unforced errors. I can't control if I miss a shot or not. That's not really the issue. A foul, give up an and-one, they're back within two. Now that shot kind of means nothing.
We just had a lot of unforced errors. They capitalized on them because they're a good team.
Q. Most young teams, when they try to win a title for the first time, have an inflection point or pivot moment for themselves. Down 2-1 in this series, do you view that as that moment for you guys? What do you think you can learn from the Denver series here?
JALEN WILLIAMS: We've been in that exact same kind of predicament. This Game 3 was a better Game 3 than the ones we've had, so we'll take that and run with it.
Yeah, I mean, it's very pivotal. Obviously you don't like being down in a series. But we have been here before. We'll take that experience and work to get better for it.
FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports