WASHINGTON, D.C. -- Here are your postgame quotes from Randy Wittman and the rest of the Washington Wizards players following Wednesday's 92-75 win over the Charlotte Bobcats
Randy Wittman
On winning: "There's nothing to critique tonight. Let's enjoy the victory. It's been a long time coming for them to come out and play like we did tonight." (He said all critiquing will be done tomorrow).
On the defense: "The difference is that first quarter is we came out defensively, all five pressured. Whoever's guy had the ball, we had magnificent ball pressure."
On getting out and running: "Everybody wants to run, and every player that you would ever talk to says they want to run. But we do have to get in shape to run. We had 31 in the first quarter and we ran out of gas a little bit in the second quarter."
Later, on the same topic: "If you want to run, we got to get in here and do extra work now. If we're going to push the ball for 48 minutes, we don't want to come up with a quarter like we came up with in the second, where we had 17 points."
On fixing bad habits: "It's like any bad habit we have. If you're a smoker, you ain't going to drop those habits in a day. I've got to help them kick some of these bad habits that we're in. That's all it is. We've fallen into playing a way that's not conducive for us to win. So when I see them pull out a cigarette, I got to take it out of my mouth."
On why he put John Wall and Nick Young back into the game late: "We've got to get in shape. This is our opportunity. We don't have a lot of practice time, so I'm trying to get these guys to keep playing through this. We don't have any opportunity but tomorrow in probably in the next week to 10 days to have some actual time on the court. That's going to be a lot of teaching on the court and not a lot of running up and down the floor. You got to use those times. I hope we have a lot of 20 point leads so I can put John back in to get his conditioning."
Editor's Note: I followed up by asking why not put all the starters back in, which Wittman took as an opportunity to talk about how well the bench played. Basically, he avoided my question.
On what he's learned from previous interim stints: "I've learned you can't throw a bundle of stuff at them and change everything, because they're not going to know what to do. So you've got to simplify things. We ran 3 or 4 things today offensively. That's all we did. But we had different looks in those different things. Last time, I tried to invent the game of basketball, and I learned from that."
Andray Blatche
On the differences between Wittman and Flip Saunders: "Me personally, Randy Wittman and Flip, they worked together. I don't know. I can’t honestly say we needed a new voice. We just needed somebody to actually check us like Wittman did."
Nick Young
On why he went back in late in the game: "They came back a bit in the second half, so he put us back in to be the icing on the cake."
On Wittman's comment about being in shape: "I thought I was in good enough shape, but after he's telling us to play full-court defense, it's kind of tough. So I got to get on that treadmill."
Rashard Lewis
On how they can keep up this ball pressure: "We got to help each other. For the wings, if we get backdoored, the next guy has to be there to help. That's what Coach has been expressing is that we have to help each other on both ends of the court, especially on defense. He wants the guards to press full court and he wants the wings to be up and try to deny as much as possible."
John Wall
On the third quarter: "We gave them a chance in the third quarter when they started making a run, but we just stepped up and didn't let the game get closer. That's what we got to do. We have to close out games and trust each other. Everybody was excited with everybody scoring, and everybody was helping."
On Wittman's comment about being in shape: "I don't know. I thought I was good conditioning-wise. I was tight when I got back in because I was sitting so long, but I was just going with whatever the coach told me. You can't tell the coach, 'No, I'm not going back in the game.' That'll cost you down the road.