Damian Lillard on Dubs 'It’s a learning experience for us.'

Unknown Wednesday, November 02, 2016

Damian Lillard on the Warriors:"They made plays."

We got to be better in the third. I think the last two games, it’s like our energy isn’t there, but I think part of it is how well we do in the first half sometimes. We move the ball well, we have energy, and the when we come out we got to understand that teams adjust. And really good teams, they really adjust, so the things that was there in the first half is not going to be there as easy as it might have been in the first half.

They going to try to take what was successful away from us, and it seems like we take a little bit longer to adjust to that. A little bit lackadaisical, letting teams tip passes, not getting back on defense with the same amount of urgency, and we got to tighten those things up. I think once we put together better third quarters and get the game going down the stretch, we can play with anybody.

We didn’t communicate as well as we did in the first half. We need to do a better job of it in the first half. In the third quarter we slipped up. We allowed them to get clean looks, they got it going, they made plays. Every mistake that we made, every turnover, every offensive rebound that we gave up, every miscommunication in coverage, it seemed like they took advantage of it.

There goes that man...

A video posted by Portland Trail Blazers (@trailblazers) on Nov 1, 2016 at 7:50pm PDT

A lot of times, we was allowing that to be Steph (Curry) in transition and loose balls. The ball kept finding him and once he hit a couple off our mistakes, he started hitting tough ones. Then they started setting screens and we were so worried about staying attached to him, they started slipping to the rim. It just got away from us. It’s a learning experience for us, but, at the end of the day it’s one game out of 82.

I think it just shows that elite teams find a way to do what they do best. In the first half, we got with them. We were right there and they just stuck with it. They kept doing what they do, they were physical on defense, they had active hands, makes and misses; they pushed it out, they screened for each other, they played their game. In the first half, we were right there. In the second half, they stuck with it. Their defense was more consistent than ours and their offense was more freely than ours was. We needed to have more of a presence. So I think he was right. It shows what we need to do better to be able to stay in a game like that.

You have nights like that. Like I was saying, when we aren’t making shots and they are making shots, we got to be able to do those small things. We got to limit them to one possession, we got to help each other out on off-ball screens, we got to protect the paint, we got to have a tighter shell on the weak side when that’s happening so when we aren’t making shots, we got to make it harder for them to make shots as well, and tonight we didn’t do that. But missing shots, it happens.