“I thought we came out scoring at will and it is funny how that always works. When you score easily you tend to think that is the way you win. I think we kind of got caught up in easy baskets, easy buckets. We kind of veered away from the things that we are trying to forge ourselves to be at. That is a tough defensive team. It is a lesson well learned. I think we are still a work in progress and we are going to keep pushing the envelope to be what we want to be."

(On defense in the 4th quarter)

“A lot of times it was disciplinary things that we are trying to instill. Certain rotations, certain things that we just weren’t suppose to do that we did. We are still young in this process and you kind of expect things like that to happen. It is definitely not an overreaction from me. Just trying to get everybody collectively as a group to understand that you have to do it together. It has to be everybody pulling in the same direction. When you are trying to change the culture, when you are trying to change status quo, it is tough. A lot of our guys have never been through that. It is not a quick, overnight change and we realize that. So it’s not anything we do not expect to happen, but we work through it and we learn through it. We will continue to coach our guys up and be positive.”

(On Beasley’s performance)

“He just seemed a step off tonight. I just told him relax and play. I was not worried about him. I thought he had some good looks. I thought he hesitated a little. I just think he was a little off. I don’t know if he was so hyped or so ready. He just got himself off a little, but I am not worried about him. I will take what he did tonight and the shots and I will take all of that. I am looking long term with Mike. As long as I see progress with Mike I am happy.”

(On lack of intensity)

“I think our intensity was not the same as last game. We were not engaged on defense, and you know, if you get some stops then you’re not pressure on offense. We struggled offensively and they scored a few easy baskets so we don’t defend.”

(On the bench performance)

“We need everybody. Like I said before, it’s not only the starting five. Even the guys coming from the bench – we need all of our top players if we want to win games. Shannon was the only guy from the bench that played really well. We were up 11 and then they had another big run and they caught us.

(On defensive effort after hot start)

“That was kind of it, you know, things were kind of too easy for us so we didn’t play defense like we should have and they scored a lot of points in the first quarter – and in the second quarter – and obviously they outscored us for the game. You know, we gave up way too many points and we definitely should have locked down a little bit better on defense.”

(On tonight’s game)

“Cutting down on turnovers was the key to the game particularly in the second half. We had 12 in the first half and that’s too many. You can’t win on the road turning the ball over 12 times a half, no way. Guys did a much better job; our execution was better, our defense was better, our rebounding was better. We were able to finally get a lead and build on it a little bit. They’re (Dallas bench) was playing well, with a lot of energy. They actually got us the lead I believe and then it was up to our finishers to finish. Everybody did their job tonight.”

(On responding from a loss)

“In this league you have to forget about it (last night’s loss) and move on to the next game and give ourselves a chance to win this game. So we forgot about it just in time and we wanted to make sure we closed this one out and we did. (On Carlisle’s coaching style) You have to kind of take it with a positive outlook. Just because he’s being hard on us or easy on us in a difficult way you can’t take it too seriously. He’s trying to make us better and help us become the players we need to be in this league and it’s been good for me. I think we’ve had steady improvement.”

(On the win)

“I thought we really enforced our will, raised our level of competitiveness and toughness, mentally and physically to go out there and get that win. We had 12 turnovers at halftime and we got back to even and didn’t play a very good half of basketball. We knew going into the second half, on the road, not playing a very good first half and to have a tie ball game, we had to keep our energy and our effort up and our engagement in the game on the whole we would have a chance to win.”