HEAT Head Coach Pat Riley

“They shot the ball extremely well. They are a great shooting team. They just picked us apart in two quarters. Then we made the comeback. Then in overtime we went back to playing defense like we did in the first three quarters. We weren’t intense and didn’t stay with it. We couldn’t make shots.”
“They picked us apart and they had a lot to do with it. We could score, but we couldn’t stop them.”

On the Grizzlies:
“ Hubie (Brown) has done a great job with their execution and their spacing. Everybody was hitting timely shots. Every single player on their team where hitting shots when they needed them. They have the makings of a great offensive team.”

On three point shot for OT…
“We were out there and we didn’t want to get embarrassed. You have got to play hard, you have to play through it. My teammates kept finding me and helping me to get sweet shots, so I tried to make them.”
“We have got to play like that from the jump, not just when you are down. Defensively we were there, but we have got to make more shots. Now it’s history.”

On the Team’s Comeback…
“We had a great effort. It was nice to see us come back, but it takes so much energy to comeback. You have got to either sustain your level of play or go beyond that. We just had several breakdowns, and they were hitting their shots.”

On Guarding Pau Gasol…
“I played him as good as any one can, but he kept getting looks and getting nice touches. He was spinning on me and laying it in. Hey, what can you do”?

On the Team’s Comeback…
“We showed a lot of character. They kept coming at us. We showed resilience and it took us to overtime but we just couldn’t get the victory.”

On Coach Pat Riley’s comment of playing like “sleepwalkers”…
“What I think he meant by that is we weren’t focused. But I wouldn’t call it sleepwalking. They were fast breaking and we weren’t getting back. We turned the ball over a lot in the beginning. And you can’t do that against a team like this that likes to fast break.”

On the game:
“You have seen something tonight that you have never seen in your life. It was unbelievable. Nobody can ever say that when you come to the Pyramid, that it won’t be exciting.”

“The turnovers maximized their quickness and they got some decent stuff. Then they made some big shots, and by that I mean Eddie Jones. Eddie Jones was five for seven in three’s. After that you saw some freak things happen that allowed them to recover and then they got the last shot.

“The last shot I thought we defended perfectly… Brian (Grant) got that ball and ran that ball back and it is easy to say that you have to stay with your people. When he got the rebound Caron (Butler) was right there and I give Caron a lot of credit for making that shot. You could fold in that situation and it is easy to fold, but we didn’t.”

“The first half was up and down in spurts with a lot of great defense with a lot of fast breaking. We forced them into a lot of turnovers. We forced them into 11 turnovers. There is a lot of good, but the turnovers gave them a chance to come back. You have to give Lorenzen Wright a lot of credit for his big plays.”

“They were very aggressive, they played us tough and they banged us around. They made it difficult.”