> “We buckled to the adversity,” coach Brian Keefe said. “We fouled when we shouldn’t. We didn’t dig in when they made certain runs. This group has never done that. That was disappointing on all of our end. We have to own that. But that was the thing that was bothering me the most, is that after the initial start of the game, which I thought we came out with a necessary mindset and attitude, once we got hit, we didn’t respond well.”
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> It was a bad enough performance that, after Keefe spoke to the team following the final buzzer, the Wizards held a players-only meeting in their locker room.
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> “We needed that talk, I think,” Coulibaly said afterward. “The guys just stepped up, the vets, the guys that have been used to winning. That’s what we’re trying to do here in the next year. So they had to talk to us, and they did a great job about this and everybody was listening.”