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Nick Nurse praises Raptors' bounce-back mentality vs. Bucks after Pistons loss

"That's as quick a turnaround as I can remember having. But the good news is it was so nice to be playing again after last night, to get a chance to look at something that wasn't last night." Follow our Raptors coverage all season long on Yahoo Sports Canada.

Video Transcript

NICK NURSE: Play in transition, you can get in trouble in a hurry like that. But I just said, hey, listen. We're generating good shots. Just keep doing what you're doing and settle down a little bit. And good fight back.

REPORTER: [INAUDIBLE]

NICK NURSE: Yeah. Just again, I don't really know, specifically. I think just he's been in a pretty good rhythm just in general, especially over the last maybe six weeks.

And he just had some good patience, I thought, got to some match-ups, saw what he saw what he could see over some guys and was able to make a lot of good plays. And obviously, he hit some perimeter shots too, which is huge.

ANNOUNCER: Go ahead, Jen.

ANNOUNCER: Thank you. Go ahead, Doug.

REPORTER: Hey, Nick. What's it say about your guys coming off last night's game to gut out that one playing basically six or seven guys all night? What's that tell you about the character of your team?

NICK NURSE: Well I mean, that was a heck of a fight, Doug. It really was. It was a really difficult task just in general, before the ball even went up, right? That's as quick a turnaround as I can remember ever having in a game.

But the good news on that, it was so nice to be playing again after last night to get a chance to look at something that wasn't last night, right? So just incredible execution, I thought, especially defensively. And they just kept making the right reads.

And we were fortunate. We hit shots. That's a big deal when you can get some of these random plays and random open shots to go down. And we strung a bunch of them up there for a while but kept our confidence high.

REPORTER: You do have three guys, Fred, Pascal, and OG. And you put them in two-man games, different combinations basically all night. What kind of huge benefit is that, Coach, to be able to mix and match all of them as ball handlers, screen setters, shooters, rollers, whatever?

NICK NURSE: Yeah. I mean, that's becoming a thing that we're finding a lot of different areas. You can see sometimes we're doing it in the middle of the floor. And sometimes we're doing it on the side. And sometimes we're doing it in a little passing and cutting thing between the three of them as well.

I guess, it's just we're trying to create some match-ups that they can take advantage of. We're trying to get some slip-out screens for faced-up shots. We're trying to get some rolls.

We're trying to mix up a lot of different actions between those three guys and then who's setting, who's handling, as well. And it's just enough to keep us not too repetitive, so they know what's coming, I guess.

REPORTER: Great. Thanks so much. Safe trip down to Miami. Say hi to Kyle for us.

NICK NURSE: OK. Thanks, Doug.

ANNOUNCER: Thanks, Doug. Go ahead, Josh.

REPORTER: Hey, Nick. Congrats on the win. Obviously, those three guys that you just talked about carrying a big workload offensively. And they really carried you guys offensively in the first half. How big were those other three guys though, in the second half between Champagnie, Boucher, and Precious in terms of taking pressure off of the other three?

NICK NURSE: Well they were huge, I thought, especially Precious and Chris. Not only were they making good plays just in general, not playing pretty mistake-free. And then on top of that, they're sticking a couple jumpers here and there.

I think, Chris made two and Precious made one. Chris might have made three. Let me look here. I don't know, whatever.

So on top of them not-- and they were defendants. So they were really valuable. And Justin, I thought, didn't have much to show except for one huge 3 as well.

So again, it's such a funny game, you know? We make none of those, not a single one last night. And we pile up about six or seven tonight from those guys. And that's the difference in both games, really.

REPORTER: Chris made a point after the Phoenix game, saying, that you guys have to play like that against everybody, not just the good teams. And Fred has sort of alluded to it throughout the season too, sort of frustration early in the year of playing up to teams and playing down to teams.

How do you explain the discrepancy just in terms of the performance, even in a 24-, 26-hour span?

MAN: What do we have here?

MAN: This is more--

NICK NURSE: Ah, I don't read a ton into it, Josh. I think that you do understand how hard you got to play against teams with incredible players and size and bench and all that stuff, or it's going to be a really long night. So I think, you do have a mindset of really being focused in on that kind of stuff.

And as a coach, everybody's always saying, oh, are you going to play the same way every day, every night, all that stuff? It's such a long season. There's bound to be ups and downs and whatever.

I just think these guys are fighters. And they love the challenge, right? They love the challenge. And they really fought hard tonight.

REPORTER: Thanks, Nick. Safe flight.

NICK NURSE: Thanks, Josh.

ANNOUNCER: Thanks, Nick. Go ahead, Michael Grange.

MICHAEL GRANGE: Hey, Nick. Have you had a second to think about coaching against Kyle on Monday? And what's your first thought about it, if you haven't thought about it?

NICK NURSE: Well I haven't, so let me think. I mean, listen. I assume that he's going to be ready to go. And he's going to be hard to handle.

It'll be interesting to see where they put him, match-up wise and all those kind of things. And I don't really have much to say other than, I would imagine he's going to play super hard. And he's going to get his guys ready.

And when he does that, good things happen. We know that, right? He's one of the best at getting the other guys to come with him, and get ready to play hard and play great basketball.

And they are playing great basketball just in general. I mean, really, really fabulous. So we're going to need to really have a high-level game ready to go.

MICHAEL GRANGE: Appreciate it and hope you get some sunshine tomorrow.

NICK NURSE: Thanks, Michael. Me too.

ANNOUNCER: Thanks, Nick. Last question for you comes from Aaron.

REPORTER: Hey, Nick. Congrats on the win.

NICK NURSE: Thanks, Aaron.

REPORTER: Similar to Josh's question, you guys play really well against the Suns and then not so well last night, really well tonight. What do you take away-- those three games teach you anything about this team? Did you learn anything from that three-games span?

NICK NURSE: Well I'd like to-- I'd like to say that it's two really well-played games out of three, really well played. And for whatever reason, we just don't ever seem to get going against Detroit.

They come out guard us. And we have a hard time. But two out of three against two best teams in the league from a year ago, thought we outplayed, totally outplayed the Suns and deserved to win and didn't get a bounce that we needed. And we outplayed Milwaukee tonight. And we did get some bounces that we needed. So there you go.

REPORTER: Have you started-- do you think at all about next month and the trade deadline, and where this team sits as towards, is this a team that can add something and maybe do something down the road? Are you thinking about those things? Or are you focused on this squad?

NICK NURSE: Yeah. I mean, I haven't thought about it, Aaron, too much. Again, I'm sure that Bobby and Maasai and the crew are doing what they need to do.

There's been so much going on with this team. Seriously, there's so many moving pieces constantly throughout the day. And it's been like that for weeks and weeks and weeks.

And I'm just trying to see what's in front of me here and get ready. So I want to see who's ready, going to be able to play on Monday and use whoever is available, and start figuring out how we're going to use them.

REPORTER: Thanks, Nick. Safe travels.

NICK NURSE: Thanks, Aaron. Thank you.

ANNOUNCER: Thanks, Nick.

NICK NURSE: Thanks, JQ. See you.

ANNOUNCER: See you.