HEAT Head Coach Stan Van Gundy

On the Mavericks run to end the third quarter:
“That is a very good offensive team and they went on a run there when we couldn’t hit our shots in that stretch. That was the ball game; we just couldn’t make a run back at them.”

On defending the Mavericks
“We’ve still got some things, defensively, that we don’t do real well situation wise. At the same time, Dirk Nowitzki makes his shots with guys on him, that guy can really play. That’s a heck of a team. I thought we played their pick and roll game pretty well. I thought we handled that well. I am not saying we shut it down, but we handled it pretty well. Nowitzki got a couple of back cuts and then he got a couple of catch and shoots coming off a screen. I thought that was where they really hurt us.”

HEAT Forward Lamar Odom

On staying with the Mavericks until late in the third period:
“That’s a great offensive team. I thought we played against them fairly well. In that third quarter, our offense gave in just a little bit and then they got hot. Then they just jabbed us the whole fourth quarter and kept us away.”

On how he played offensively:
“I can get my shot from anywhere on the court. I have to become more efficient. I’m getting to the rim and not finishing. In the first half, I missed two layups. In the second half, I missed two layups. I thought I got pushed and shoved on a couple of those drives, but when you go to the basket hard and you start to finish you get those calls. Maybe I wasn’t going hard enough. You’ve got to hit you layups, you’ve got to make your free throws and your open shots to beat a team like this.”

HEAT Guard Brian Grant

On how the HEAT stayed with the Mavericks
“The only thing you can take out of tonight is that we truly competed. We had a little trouble getting through the one-five pick and roll and Nowitzki just got hot. When he is shooting like that, you can’t give him room. There were times when I was right on him, and he was hitting those. Other times, Nash was setting good cross screens, he gets half a second and he hits a shot.”

Mavericks Head Coach Don Nelson

On the game:
"The boxscore looks good, but I don’t think we played very well. My hat is off to Miami. I thought they gave a great effort. They gave us everything we wanted, undermanned, and we ran into a hot team or we made them a hot team, I’m not sure. They made shots and I didn’t know that it wasn’t going to be a nightmare before it was all over."

"I don’t think anybody was very good defensively. The only guy you can circle would be Eddie. We needed to put a stop to Lamar Odom and he did a really good job on Odom. We need a better all around performance from everybody."

On Dirk carrying the team in the third quarter:
"He carried us offensively. He looked a little tired, but offensively he was really good. We ran a lot of things for him and when we got openings for him, he made a lot of right cuts and made the right shots."

Mavericks Forward Antoine Walker

On trying to defend the HEAT in the first half:
“Well, we were just trying to rotate. We didn’t want Lamar Odom posting up and finding guys, but he did a good job anyway and they were able to knock down their shots. They (Miami) hadn’t been shooting the basketball particularly well coming into tonight’s game, but they really came out shooting the ball well. They’re searching for a win and when their injured guys get back they’re going to be a lot better.”

On the fast break:
“Obviously, defense creates offense. As we continue to grow as a team we have to find ways to win and every night it’s going to be different. You have to expect teams to play very well against you sometimes and we were able to keep our composure tonight. We were able to keep running and get easy shot opportunities. Tonight, we were able to get Dirk some easy baskets and Steve did a good job finding guys throughout the night. We did a good job of distributing the basketball.”

Mavericks Forward Antawn Jamison

On getting on the same page offensively:
“There’s 82 games in the season and I don’t care how good of a team you are, there’s going to be a stretch where you struggle, where things aren’t going right, but we have yet to even get to that point. We’re still trying to find out our defined roles and trying to get comfortable with that. The most important things is to get these victories while we’re still learning and so far we’ve done that with three wins in a row. It’s a learning curve and we’ ve still got a long way to go."