HEAT Head Coach Stan Van Gundy

On sweeping the season series against the Wizards:
“To get all four of them, against a team I think is very good and is going to play at this high level throughout the year, is great. By the time we would play them again when the playoffs came around is so far down the road that I don’t know if it would be a whole lot of psychology stuff going on.”

On the team’s play:
“We just didn’t play the game real smoothly offensively tonight. Nobody played at a real high energy level tonight. It was just a stand around walk around game. That is not exactly how we want to play. We ended up doing enough to get the job done.”

HEAT Guard Dwyane Wade

On playing without Shaquille O’Neal in the last minute of the game:
“I think guys have a lot of confidence on this team. We know when he leaves the game we have to step up and make plays. We had confidence when he went out that we were going to get the win.”

HEAT Center Shaquille O'Neal

On the game:
“I made a lot of silly fouls tonight, but my guys stepped up for me tonight. Damon Jones played a good game, Wade was the usual Wade. Overall the team played pretty good.”

On the Wizards:
“We match up with the Wizards pretty well. They play with a lot of energy and they have a lot of good shooters. I think that if we can contain their energy and their shooters we can beat them.”

Wizards Forward Antawn Jamison

On the loss:
“These are the tough ones that you have to swallow. We did a good job through out the game controlling the tempo, controlling the style of the game and in the last two minutes it just slipped away. It’s hard to swallow a loss like this because we worked so hard. We did a good job for close to 48 minutes and to come up on the losing end of a game like this is very hard to swallow. “

“We have nothing to hang our heads about. We played hard and we should have won, but we didn’t. As soon as I walk out of this locker room it’s over with and we get ready for the West Coast swing.”

“It’s hard to take a loss like this because you let it slip away, but it’s going to make us stronger, build more character to this team and make us hungrier.”

On his performance:
“I didn’t hit the shots. They got the ball in my hands in great opportunities; I just didn’t hit the shots. Offensively, down the stretch, I take responsibility. Defensively, I thought we did an excellent job and we made it hard for those guys, but down the stretch you get the ball and you have to find a way to get it done. I didn’t get it done tonight.”

On the offense in the fourth quarter:
“We just didn’t get it done. I take a lot of responsibility offensively. I took some bad shots and some shots didn’t go in, but that’s part of the game. We got the ball in the right people’s hands but we weren’t able to convert. Defensively, a couple of plays here and there and this is a different story.”

Wizards Guard Gilbert Arenas

On the game:
“This will be a bad one to swallow. We thought that it was our game to win. There were a couple of loose balls that we could have had, and plays that we could have made that would have made the difference. It wasn’t even Shaq (O’Neal) that beat us. Everybody else beat us. We just have to swallow this one, and keep our heads up.”

On Damon Jones’ three-pointer:
“We had a little bit of a breakdown. I got sucked in on (Dwyane) Wade when he drove, and it left (Damon) Jones open. If I had stayed out, it might have been different. But when Wade has 14 points in the fourth quarter, of course he was going to draw the attention. He drove and sucked me in with him.”

On the season-series with Miami:
“I’m not happy that we’re done with them. They beat us four times, but we want another chance. If it goes down to the wire with us and them this season, we won’t have a chance to get it done against them. We’ll have to rely on other teams to beat them, and that’s not a position that we want to be in.”

Wizards Guard Larry Hughes

On Miami:
“They beat us four times. I’ll admit that they are a couple of plays better than us right now. They made a couple of plays tonight to put them over the top, and a couple of plays at their place on Monday to win. We played them tough, but they were a few plays better.”

On the Wizards:
“Of course we’re disappointed, and we don’t have another chance to get one against them. We played pretty well for stretches against them all season, but we couldn’t get it done. In Miami we played good defense but we couldn’t hit a shot. Tonight we played well on offense, but they hit some shots. We just have to put it all together. We still feel good about ourselves going out West.”

On the West Coast trip:
“We feel comfortable in what we’re doing. We just have to play our game out there, and we’ll come home with some victories. We play four games in five nights, but we’ll be ready. We had the opportunity to measure ourselves against Miami, and we know where we are. We’ll take it from here, and look to come back from the West in solid position.”