We thought we had a legitimate beef with the way they were playing Dirk. When you don’t complain, sometimes it can give the message that you don’t care.

We needed to jump-start him a little, and I’m open to doing whatever works. Now, we just need to get that on a consistent basis. He was intense and wanted to play well. Now we...

Very few teams go there. I think that’s a great accomplishment. In our league, and in the Western Conference particularly, 50 wins means a lot.

That was one of the reasons why we won that first quarter, … Doug was running the offense a lot of the time, and his on-the-ball defense is always good.

We struggled to guard Yao in the first half, but we made some adjustments and were much more physical in the second half. We were fortunate enough to hold him down then.

We couldn’t stop anybody tonight. We were lethargic physically and mentally. We just didn’t have it but they deserved to win.

It is a disappointing loss. When we come to the games we try and give ourselves a chance to win. I wasn’t trying to rally the team by getting ejected; I think it was more...

Everybody is asking me if I’m going to play Elton Brand 48 minutes because we play (the Clippers) Tuesday. No, none of that. Just spread out the playing time.

Tonight we needed a good start and that set the tempo for the rest of the game.

It’s a game we’ve got to go to San Antonio and play. Then we have to come back and play another game (against Charlotte on Friday). I think the big swing games will be in...

He’s got to play more minutes and be more responsible. That’s why it’s team game. You can have a 10th man in the starting lineup. We have guys one through 12 that we feel good...

My point is, what’s the argument? There’s no argument. It’s a no-brainer.

I’m sure that we’re going to see everybody against Dirk, like we have the other four games.

He’s doing some light shooting, moving around better, a lot of pool work. He’s looking good. It’s just a matter of when we can get him back out on the practice court and him having...

The players challenged themselves to pick it up defensively. We didn’t shoot the ball particularly well tonight. We had a good team effort. We had a lot of contribution from a lot of different people.

We’re on the radar now. There is no hiding.

I think we’re better defensively and much more physical. We’re a little bit more mature and a little bit more experienced and a little bit more tougher minded.

I’m very disappointed with this loss. We realize who we were playing, but then again we gave them some easy baskets. We have just got to do a better job with our defense.

I’ve erred on the side of caution in certain situations, like Jerry, who had an inflated knee. Marquis [Daniels’] neck situation, we’re cautious about that for a reason. This particular ankle injury Keith has is...

It’s much needed. He needs to play, and we need to see what we got.

We’ve had a pretty good year up to this point. So we don’t want to let all of that go down the drain because we got four guys injured.

No question, this was a big win for us. We stayed mentally and physically tough.

Our thoughts and prayers are with everyone who was affected by this tragedy,

We stepped up big defensively in the fourth quarter. We were fortunate to get away from them.

The road wasn’t too friendly to us the last time. I’m already getting a bad memory. Hopefully, we’ll have a better response on the road overall than the last game and give ourselves a chance...

You got to be able to go to guys one through 12. We’re not afraid to go to D.A. (Darrell Armstrong). We’re not afraid to go to D.J. It’s a good positive.

It’s slightly improved. If we can cut down on some of those turnovers where he’s trying to throw it through five people and just make the easy play, it’ll help.

I wish they would take more people, but they can’t. You have that every year. Every year you’ve got guys that’s deserving. Guys that get out there every night, lay it on the line.

We’ll just take this victory any way we can get it. There’s still another level for the Mavericks to go to. We’re just not there yet.

We don’t like losing one in a row. You can only imagine how two in a row feels.

You’re concerned any time a guy is injured and you have a timetable and are not able to hit those kind of goals.

It was by far the most active I’ve seen him, … When he has that emotion, it drives up our whole defense. I tell him every day how much he means to this team.

He helped carry this franchise for a lot of years and he didn’t take many nights off. I think that’s what I really respected about him.

I think the Mavericks — our team — we’ve kind of forgotten who we are as basketball team and what made us successful. It wasn’t shots on the offense. It wasn’t holding the ball. We’ve...

We have guys watching all of the teams we can possibly play against, logging the miles, flying across the country. I think over-preparation is a good thing.

He was one of the first coaches that came in and started talking about winning a championship and winning it with defense and don’t even make apologies about it. Don’t blink. Don’t even blink when...

And I think he wants another shot, because he was really disappointed that he was unable to play in the playoffs. We missed him tremendously. That’s just like the Spurs losing Robert Horry. That’s the...

We didn’t come here to get any moral victories. I’m disappointed with his loss.

I love it. I wish we could play the last 20 games like this because I really want to try to go into the playoffs playing at a high level. But you can’t play at...

I didn’t think we guarded Finley or [Robert] Horry well at all.

These two teams have a lot of pride. Memphis doesn’t back down from anybody, and it has not played its best game yet.

Overall it was a good team effort and we were fortunate enough to be able to rest some guys in the fourth quarter.

Our team is not playing enough of a 48-minute game and that’s the disappointing thing. We know it’s tough to win road games. This was a hot team team we were playing, give them credit....

I expect him back. Josh is a warrior. If it’s something that might linger, then we’ll think about sitting him out.

I think we need to get off to better starts. The last couple games, we kind of dug ourselves a hole. You can’t just turn it on in the second half.

We got so much going on around here, I don’t look at that.

Are they tired of what? What have we done? It’s a hundred days to the Finals right now. This is what the NBA season is about. It’s not about having three days off between a...

We’re disappointed with the way we finished the game. Our defense wasn’t very good tonight. We gave up 65 points in the second half. We had a lot of things go wrong defensively.

My guys are pretty smart. They know exactly where they are. I kind of like that we have something to play for, playing against playoff teams.

This tragedy didn’t hit Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama. It hit America.