• Josh Howard gets the start, sees his minutes increased from 14 to 22, and has his point total go from 7 to 20. Quality production.
  
• Jason Terry made a three pointer tonight that bounced off the rim six times before falling in.  It was one of his four three's on the night .  Overall, 27 points on just 16 shots.
• In a continuing theme, these are some quotes from Mark Followill tonight: "Jason Kidd with a long deuce".  "Kidd open in the corner, and he hits!...... a long two pointer."  It sure is annoying, but if he keeps on making them I've got no problem with it.
• Coming into this game I was worried about how Dallas was going to defend O'Neal and Bosh.  On paper it's not a good matchup defensively for Dampier and Dirk.  Fortunately, Bosh shut himself down.  When a play-by-play guy says about you, "I wonder if he's sick or something", you know you're having a bad game.
• Dirk had ten defensive rebounds tonight and it prompted Bob Ortegel to call him one of the best defensive rebounders in the game.  Dirk is currently 4th in the league with 8.2 defensive rebounds per game, although he falls all the way down to 30th in defensive rebound rate (% of missed shots rebounded).  Still, 8 rebounds is 8 rebounds.
• Toronto only had six turnovers tonight.  It's the third time this season a Dallas opponent has had only six turnovers in a game -- Dallas is 26th in the NBA in opponent turnovers (13.1 per game).
• Toronto only scored 53 points in the final three quarters.

Postgame Quotes

Rick Carlisle

How were you able to contain Chris Bosh?

"Well, it's a really difficult matchup because of Chris's size, ability to drive the ball...  We actually started a lineup that was a very unusual lineup based on that matchup.  We didn't want to put Dirk on him to start the game.  It probably screwed us up becuase we got hit with a couple cross-matches early for layups and dunks.  But that's the kind of respect we have for him and his game.  Let's face it, the guys an Olympian, an All-Star, a certified great player.  I'm not sure whether it was us or he was just missing, but we talked an awful lot about him and how to try and make it a little tougher for him."

Was Jason Terry the key to the first half -- keeping it manageable?

"Jason Terry is on a phenomenal streak, a phenomenal run, over the last month.  When nothing else was going good in the first half he kept us afloat, as he has on other occasions.  His shot making and his energy kept us within reasonable striking distance and allowed us to come into the second half with a realistic chance of winning the game.  I also thought Josh Howard gave us a huge lift tonight.  He scored the first seven points for us.  He had 20 points in 22 minutes.  He's going to really help our situation in terms of how we start games, because we've been really struggling the last two or three weeks to get off to good starts. "