He’s progressed a great deal. The biggest thing was understanding what we’re doing. He’s a lively guy. A little wild sometimes. But he’s becoming more under control, doing more things that really help his teammates.

That’s the Boozer we hoped for at the beginning of the year.

He stayed with it.

I think they’ve always been fairly responsive. Everybody has their own way of playing and everybody has their strengths. In order to get 12 guys happy in that situation, it’s kind of difficult at times...

This is the same thing that happened in Salt Lake. They ran us off the floor and they defended us. As I’m looking at the box score, I’m seeing they pretty much manhandled us.

Our guys kept thinking, ‘We have a chance. We have a chance.’ That is so huge in this business. I hope we learned something from that tonight.

Nelson did a great job keeping us off balance. I thought his play was terrific. He’s strong … he can score, he was able to get people the basketball and help them get the kinds...

They did a good job of getting after us. We looked like we were moving in mud.

I thought we played a lot harder tonight than we have been playing. They out hustled us in the first half, but we got after them in the second half and turned it up defensively.

We’ve talked about it and talked about it and this second half they seemed to have the idea that if we make a mistake then we pull for each other and we play through it.

The Bear was pretty darn funny. I got a kick out of watching him.

Fortunately Andrei made a couple of big plays to win the ballgame.

He was terrific. He made his shots and he’s just a wonderful player. I think we’re intimidated by him a great deal.

We’ve got to do a better job finishing the ballgame. We don’t want to leave anybody open on a 3-point shot.

Anything can happen in this business. We’re competing and we’re going to fight through to the end.

He came in this league as a great player, in my opinion. But he obviously gets better.

That was pretty big for us. It took away their momentum.

We have a little bit of stability, more so than the beginning of the year, so we have a better idea of how to play with each other. But it has taken us a little...

Those are things he can learn, but he has to put himself under a little more duress to make sure he learns it, … Because I think he can do some things out there. He...

I don’t know if it’s good or bad, but we kind of gave him the starting job. He didn’t really earn it. He’ll be just fine. It’s good for him to see different things and...

We’re still in the playoff picture. I know we don’t play like it sometimes because we give away easy baskets, but we are still right there.

Right from the beginning of the game,

We made some mistakes, but we also had some situations where I think we could’ve hung in there a little better if we’d had a couple of things go our way. I’m not going to...

I understand guys missing shots and that sort of thing. But I don’t understand not being able to block them off the boards and give them second shots right when we’re trying to win a...

I’m really glad for what happened to Karl Malone, but these guys weren’t involved in that that much. Their basic job is to get ready and play basketball, and I didn’t think we came out...

They finally played a little in the third quarter but we weren’t able to come all the way back. We turned it over 23 times and gave them 28 points.

He may have gotten a little bit tired, but I thought he was a factor for us, because he could go get the basketball. I thought he helped us a great deal defensively a couple...

Andrei was sensational. He probably played the best basketball game that he’s played in a long time. He had the basketball in his hands and did some nice things when he had it.

There’s no comparison … He’s so much farther ahead because his body fat’s down, [and] he’s just in better condition.

Hopefully, this gives us some confidence to try to get better, that’s the biggest thing. We’ve had pretty good success when we run our offense properly. Teams that play playoff-type basketball know what tough execution...

Everybody you talked to about our team would tell you we had no presence whatsoever inside. When they wanted to drive to the basket, they went to the basket, we didn’t have a presence on...

Our three best players . . . were like 8-for-22.

We have a different team than we’ve had all year. Boozer changes things just being in the game. It gives everyone more freedom with him out there.

I realize we can do a lot better and the expectations are there, but the important thing is that you do things right so you have a chance to win.

We came out real soft. They put pressure on us and we just kind of would hang out. That’s the way we played almost all night long.

I never like for anybody to miss a game. I think that if you’re going to play, you play the best. I’ve never been one of those people who hopes a guy doesn’t play, because...

If they told me to take my shoes off, I’d coach barefoot,

The way we started the game was atrocious. It looked like we wanted to play outside (on the perimeter) all night and that made it very difficult for us.

Carlos is playing pretty strong. He should probably start to be about at the level he’s playing at now after being out for a long period of time. He’s finding a rhythm. He played extremely...

We’ve always had a rule in the last second or so: get next to your man. We weren’t even close to the guy.

We just couldn’t keep them in front of us. We couldn’t keep them from penetrating to the basket. They got about everything they wanted tonight. They were playing in such a comfort zone that we...

We are still hanging in there, competing and finishing to the end.

I kind of got that feeling after a while. If I’m being discussed, I kind of want to be there.

Guys played a lot harder. They played a lot more determined to try to win, rather than the way we have been.

Size doesn’t make any difference. Heart is what makes a difference. These guys over there want to make the playoffs more than we do. That’s indicated by the way they play, how hard they play.

This was a winnable ball game on our part.

For the most part, … he’s had his moments where he’s played pretty well.

As long as Greg was here, we were always third or fourth in the league in (defensive field-goal percentage),

Because when I get put in a corner, I’m not gonna just fold up like an accordion. I never have. I’ll try to do it the right way, and be fair, but I’m gonna put...