Here is what they said after the Hawks’ 104-88 loss to the Heat Tuesday night:
“Give Miami and their defense a lot of credit. Their activity can make it difficult on you offensively. We turned the ball over too many times to stay with Miami. They shot the ball well from the 3-point line. They are a very good team. Our group played well for two and half, three quarters and there are a lot of positives to take from those first three quarters. We’ll work to improve on the turnovers, our spacing and the ball movement and defensively getting to 3-point shooters and taking guys off the line.”
- Mike Budenholzer’s opening statement
“Their bigs were very aggressive in trying to take Jeff off the ball, keep him out of the paint. There were times when our ball movement made them pay for that aggressiveness and there were times when the ball didn’t move as quickly as we needed it to. It’s the constant battle of they take away one thing and hopefully you can find something else. At times we did. At times we didn’t. They put a lot of pressure on Jeff.”
- Budenholzer on Heat’s tactics against Jeff Teague
“There were times when we held the ball or had turnovers that we brought on ourselves but their defense was excellent.”
- Budenholzer on cause of Hawks’ 24 turnovers
“I thought we looked good in the first half. We were up a lot of the first quarter. I thought the ball was moving. I thought we got a lot of good looks in the first quarter, the first half. I don’t think they took us out of our offense early. I think there were times when they took us out of our offense but the ball movement and the overall flow of the offense, a lot of the first half and even early in the third quarter, there were a lot of good stretches.”
- Budenholzer on first-half play
“Turnovers were the name of the game tonight. Twenty-four. That’s two games worth for us normally. They caused a lot of them in the half-court defense. That’s why they are the champions. You don’t win championships without playing great defense. They do a great job of trapping the ball and taking away passing lanes. That is an area of growth for us, for sure.”
- Kyle Korver on Hawks’ turnovers
“It’s both. We had some sloppy passes. We weren’t getting open for each other. We didn’t have good spacing all the time. That part is on us. They are a great defensive team. They really are. They fly around. They have incredible athletes. They are able to trap the ball and LeBron is in the back and he can cover every passing lane it seems like. Nothing really seems open.”
- Korver on Heat’s defense and Hawks sloppy play causing turnovers
“I thought they picked up their energy level another notch. They really killed us with some big 3’s. I think Chalmers hit a couple big 3’s in a row. They were tough. They were after we made bad plays on the offensive end and they hit dagger 3’s on us. We just didn’t respond in that little stretch there.”
- Korver on Heat’s third quarter
“They trapped every ball screen. That played a big role. We just didn’t take our time. We had too many turnovers. We just didn’t take the first available shot. We over-passed almost. We had a lot of open looks and tried to make the extra pass. Against this team, you have to take the first available. They fly around. That is what they do best, try to create turnovers.”
- Jeff Teague on Heat defense
“We know this team. We know how they play. Everybody’s been in the league long enough to know how they are going to play, what they are going to do. We didn’t take our time and take advantage of the opportunities that we had.”
- Teague on Hawks’ takeaway from game
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