On the contested possession at the end of the fourth quarter:
“I’m going to let coach deal with that. I’m not going to get involved with that; we just have to play the game. We can’t control anything else. It takes a toll on you. You get upset when an official makes a bad call, but you have to regroup and make something else happen.”

On his game:
“I’m going to keep attacking and hopefully it will go the other direction for me.”

HEAT Forward Caron Butler
On the game:
“We went to the basket and were attacking a lot. We’ll continue to attack and we’re going to make some mistakes. As long as we continue attacking we’ll be fine. We just have to keep our heads up and stay positive. Our zone tonight was real effective. It took away a lot of things they wanted to do, like isolations to Sprewell and kick outs.”

On the fans: “The fans were great. They came out and supported us tonight which was good.”

Knicks Coach DON CHANEY

On the game: “I like the way we gutted it out tonight. I knew the HEAT would make a run. The zone shook us up a little bit and we were not able to run our zone offense. We tried to take short cuts and get the ball into the first open guy instead of running our offense the way we practiced running it. I like the way we started out tonight, everyone played hard and aggressive and I like the way we gutted it out in the end. A lot of guys stepped up tonight. I am not just talking about the key people, I am talking about the guys who don’t get the credit they deserve, like Spoon [Clarence Weatherspoon]. The most important thing is that we walked away with a win.”

On Latrell Sprewell: “He came out ready to play. He was focused during the shoot around, and I like the carry-over. He was definitely ready to play tonight.”

On Charlie Ward: “Charlie makes big shots, he makes big plays. He is a big play guy and I trust him late in games when the pressure is on because he reacts better.”

Knicks Center Kurt Thomas

On the game: “Normally back in the day, these games came down to the last shot. It was a real intense game. Sprewell got us going early. He hit a lot of tough shots and everyone was feeding off of him. We shot the ball extremely well in the first half.”

Knicks Guard Allan Houston

On the last shot by Charlie Ward: “We had gotten two penetrations and moved the defense and then after the ball movement we got the open shot. Charlie has made a lot of teams pay for leaving him open at the end of the game. It was the biggest shot of the game. We were so happy because that was the shot that pretty much sealed it for us.”

Knicks Forward/Guard Latrell Sprewell

On the game: “In the second half we were not getting the ball into the teeth of their zone. Therefore, we were playing into their hands. You never know when you are going to play well, but I had it going well early tonight. I usually play well down here, I don’t know why.”

On the bench: “We need the starters to play well and the guys coming off the bench. Shandon Anderson played great defense and we used him in the post tonight. The guys coming off the bench are key for us.”