LOS ANGELES CLIPPERS MEDIA CONFERENCE

May 25, 2021

Reggie Jackson

Postgame Press Conference

Dallas Mavericks - 127, Los Angeles Clippers 121

Q. At some point the core four of Kleer, THJ, Luka, and Porzingis are shooting like 70 percent from the field, near 70 from three. How much of that do you think is game plan mistakes and how much is that them just making tough shots?

REGGIE JACKSON: They're doing a good job playing ball. They're moving it, attacking us. Luka is not only playing with the ball, but he's making the right decisions and they've been aggressive. They're making hard decisions, but we just have to be better defensively, have to be more hungry. I'm sure we'll go ahead, watch film again tonight. Everybody probably individually, watch it again tomorrow, and we'll come up with a good scheme. But for the most part it's going to be on us to just go out here and take on the challenge of figuring out how to stop these guys again. We can't let Luka beat us by himself and we can't let their core guys, their main guys, beat us. So I got a lot of faith in this team and I know guys have a lot of pride, so we'll go back and get to the film and we'll figure out a way to slow them down.

Q. I think it was a couple days ago you were talking about Ty and what you liked so much about his style, that you felt like he let the locker room lead within its -- players lead the locker room to themselves. How do you guys as players take the lead right now to enter Game 3 confident with the mindset that you can turn this series around?

REGGIE JACKSON: I think we're confident. It's only, what, down 0-2. All we can do is control what we can control. So we're going to come out here and compete. Our main objective is to get one win and then go from there. So we're going to make some adjustments, we're going to figure out how we can be better, but individually figure out how we can be better and then figure out how we can be better as a team. And the main goal is to go get one game on Friday. Don't look ahead, don't look past that, and then we'll go from there.

Q. The plan for this game, I'm sure, was to correct some of the things that you already were planning to go do in Game 1, and also to make adjustments from what went wrong in Game 1. From your perspective, what were some of the things that y'all planned on doing the same just better and what were some of the adjustments that y'all had coming into this game that you tried to implement?

REGGIE JACKSON: We switched throughout the game, whether it be hedging on Luka or whether it be switching or whether it be firing. For the most part, it's going to be on us about our communication. You can't break down communication and then we can't give them easy baskets. Live ball turnovers allow them to get out in transition allowing guys to get shots, feel good about themselves. So it's a tough loss, but I think everybody in the locker room has their head high, a little frustrated, figure out how we're going to be better just because we feel like we let go two games that we very much could win. But it's difficult and it's very frustrating but we're going to get to the board, we're going to figure out how we can be better, and mostly, I think, we're just going to take care of the ball. We're going to figure out how to continue to team rebound and game rebound so we can keep them off the offensive boards and get second chances. And we just want to limit them to one shot. Get them to play against our set defense as much as possible and then limit them to one shot and continue to communicate, communicate better, do everything we can to control what we can control, and I think we'll once again get ourselves a great shot to win on Friday. But we just got to cut down on our mistakes.

Q. You're big on playing basketball with joy. Luka sure seems to have that part of the game down. What does that look like out there and how much do you think his teammates feed off that?

REGGIE JACKSON: I think they feed off it tremendously. When he looks like he's having fun they're all cool, calm and collected. So we got to figure out a way to rattle him, rattle the head of the snake first and then let everybody else kind of get rattled as well. So I think we're going to get the film, we're going to watch it, we're going to figure out how we can be better. We already have a ton of pride in this locker room, but we're going to amp it up a little more, have some more individual pride in what we're doing and continue to harp on each other, hold each other accountable and just continue to stick to our game plans and just put more energy and effort out there. And like I said, try to cut down on our mistakes that's allowing them to have these second chance points, these fast break points and allowing guys to feel good about themselves early. So we're going to find a way to take them out of the game and then make it as difficult as possible on Luka.