“Somebody’s gotta come with some f***ing energy”
After a frustrating 114-113 loss to the Phoenix Suns, Dallas Mavericks head coach Jason Kidd let it rip at his normally benign postgame presser. We also heard from Luka Doncic postgame, but his quotes were typical and we won’t dive into that. The focus here will be with the head coach, who made waves with his postgame words.
Jason Kidd
On the Mavericks starting slow once again
“For whatever reason, we get off to a slow start, it’s got to be addressed. We’ve talked about it. Got to be action, got to be energy. Somebody’s got to come with some f***ing energy. We’re f***ing flat. So, that’s where it starts, it’s the want.”
On the offensive rebounding by Phoenix
“We gotta be tough no matter how many injuries we have or how small we are. The whole league is small. Right now we’re not doing that, so we’ll look at the tape and get back to see what we can do better.”
On the second half
“The positives, we fought. We scored 60 points there in the second half. The pace was really good. The ball touched the paint and we got wide open shots. Make or miss, that’s how we have to play on both ends. We got rebounds.”
On Luka & Kyrie’s workload
“Again, the fatigue of running Luka & Ky 40 some minutes, because our bench stinks right now. So, as deep as we are, we gotta get someone to f***ing participate off the bench. Somebody has to join the party to help Ky and Luka, and that’s just not happening right now. It’s a team. It’s not just Luka and Ky and Klay, others have to participate and that’s just not happening right now. I played the whole f***ing team tonight. We couldn’t find anybody, so we had to leave those two in to carry the load. That’s not fair to them this early in the season.”
On Quentin Grimes’ lack of playing time
“He’s gotta make a shot, he’s just gotta relax. Understand, we’re missing layups, we’re just doing stupid stuff right now. That tends to happen during the season, so we’re not going to panic over that. He’s not a plus, pretty much the entire bench isn’t a plus right now, so they gotta participate. We can’t guard the ball at 40 feet and get blown by, [Tyus] Jones and [Grayson] Allen can’t just walk to the basket, we gotta keep the ball in front. So, defensively he’s got to be better”
Well then! This was the most frustrated Jason Kidd has been after a game in a long time, maybe ever. Kidd will do this from time to time over the course of the season to try and get the teams’ attention. However, it typically is contained and doesn’t come off as direct as this was. It’s clear that he’s not getting the results out of them that he expects. The team surely heard even worse than that, so hopefully we’re in for an inspired effort Sunday evening against the Denver Nuggets.
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