LOS ANGELES CLIPPERS MEDIA CONFERENCE

May 28, 2021

Rick Carlisle

Postgame Press Conference

Los Angeles Clippers - 118, Dallas Mavericks - 108

RICK CARLISLE: We obviously got off to a very fast start, then they climbed back into it and some things stand out statistically. When they're playing that small, we have got to be able to do a better job on the boards than get beat by six. That's one thing.

They shot it great. Their two superstars had great games. They rode those guys. They played very well. We're going to have to play better in Game 4. I mean, they shot essentially 58 percent and 42 percent from three, and we shot 44 from the field and we had a pretty decent night from three. And then the free-throw line hurt us a little bit again too. So those are things right off the bat. The other thing that is a concern is the assist number. 17 is not enough for us. We got to be a higher assist team and that will happen if we can get more stops and get out in transition and those are always your best opportunities to score.

Q. With the Clippers basically daring you to post up Porzingis playing small, I know generally you're not a fan of the post up, is that something that you guys need to do and to be effective with or how do you get more from KP if they're going to play small like they did?

RICK CARLISLE: Well, there are certain situations he's, KP's very good with post ups. I don't want to get into a lot of detail explaining the whole thing, but we're a spacing team first and when we get good deep post up opportunities those are ones we got to attack. But part of the challenge with him is that he's a very good cutter. He's a very good spacer. And so he kind of, he needs to play the game out of reads in movement and overall our offensive movement wasn't very good, but the bigger problem tonight was the defense. Let's be clear. We're not going to make this about missed shots or opportunities to post up KP or anybody else. I mean, we got to defend better. We give up 59 percent shooting to this team, you're going to have a very difficult time winning the game unless you're shooting galactically great. And that's, in a playoff series, that's very difficult to do.

Q. You mentioned before the game that you had talked to the team about managing energy, it's going to be a long game. You guys got off to the big start. Do you think that that became an issue as the game wore on, that you guys jumped on them so much and there was so much energy in the building that maybe it kind of ran out of air a little bit?

RICK CARLISLE: No, I don't. They took two timeouts early. And, look, it's a long game. You got to play out the entire first quarter, and then the entire second quarter, third, and fourth. It's almost three hours of basketball if you. When you count up a national TV game with the long pauses, it's going to be two or three or four review situations, you know, and that kind of stuff. So, look, good strong starts are important. I certainly don't blame the loss on that at all. I'll look closely at rotations and stuff like that. And, look, they had a great night and we did not, so we're going to have to play a lot better at both ends in Game 4. The crowd was great. They were into it. We got to get them more into it by finding ways to get more stops and rebounds.

Q. In regards to the defense specifically like you talked about, what did you think of the double teams you threw at, mostly at Kawhi, and the execution you had on them?

RICK CARLISLE: I haven't watched the whole game yet. I've just watched a couple minutes of the beginning. So obviously they did a good job of spacing and making plays and they baited us into some double teams and then spaced the floor very well. We'll have to take a good close look at it and simply do better. You know, we won the first two games with aggressive double-teaming that was on time and on point. So in Game 4 we're going to have to do a better job, no question about it.