Game Recap: Mavericks One Basket Short of Comeback, Fall to Lakers 100-95

I did some math, and over the past two weeks, the Mavs are allowing 50% shooting and 46 points in the paint. For a team with title pretensions, that’s disgusting.

Mavericks coach Rick Carlisle

Our Defense makes me wanna cry…

(on Dampier) "Basketball is a game of reactions and plays that are made and if Damp makes a dunk and makes a free throw, we’re all singing another tune. You can’t deprogram a guy from making the right basketball play. Against San Antonio last year, Dirk made countless plays like that and if he hadn’t, we wouldn’t have won the series. It doesn’t come down to that play. I can count up a dozen other mistakes we made that contributed to it coming down to one play that everybody puts a microscope on. You can’t give up points at the end of the second and third quarters. We’ve got to do a better job of handling those situations. If the team is not doing well, it’s on me as the coach. We’re going to spend more time on late-quarter, closing out more. I thought that those were two huge momentum plays in the game along with a lot of others."

(on first quarter vs. rest of game) "We had seven assists on eight field goals in the first quarter. We were moving the ball well. But then we hit a stretch where we were struggling to get the ball in the hole and so we reverted to some one-pass shots. That’s something that we cannot allow to happen. We were ball movement team. When we move it a lot, we hit great shots. When shots aren’t going in, you have to trust and stay with it. We had 24 assists for the game, which is a pretty good number, and they had 16. I think we’re a team that has to have a certain balance. It’s tough when we have to pile on and tell Dirk to go win the game for us in the last three minutes. It’s not fair to him. A lot of that could have been eliminated had we made several other basketball plays that may have been totally unrelated to offense."

(on playing from behind and team defense) "When you play from behind, it’s dicey at best. Look at the whole league. When you enter the fourth quarter behind, you’re going to lose most of the time. That’s how it is. There is a collection of little things we have to be better with that would take us out of these situations. Neutral rebounds, couple unnecessary gambles that led to reactions. They add up. They shoot 49 percent basically and if they shoot 50, it’s four in the last five games when an opponent has shot 50-or-better against us. Our problems are at the defensive end. That’s the biggest thing we’ve got to work to resolve. We’ve shown we can be a good defensive team. We’ve just got to keep with it."

(on Nowitzki) "He’d rather have the win than 20,000 points. That’s where the disappointment is. You get a guy who is pure basketball heart. He’d do anything to win any ball game and he wouldn’t care how many points he scored. That’s what really makes him special along with the other things you guys have seen on a daily basis for over a decade. The shot making, the plays, the 3s. All that stuff. It’s very disappointing. But it was a special moment when the crowd stood and applauded for what seemed like several minutes, and it was well deserved."

Mavericks Forward Shawn Marion

I’m ahead in the teamintern dopeface-contest. Take that J-Ho!

On the game … “This was a fight. We were going back and forth and trading buckets for a long time it seemed like. And then when we needed a stop we couldn’t get it and then Kobe hit that big shot towards the end of the fourth quarter and we got a good look at a three, but we didn’t knock it down. They just cruised in on into the finish line from there. We just couldn’t get those stop tonight. I think for the most part we were trading buckets back and forth and when you trade buckets back and forth, at the end of the day, that is not going to cut it, it’s not enough. You have to get some stops consecutively and when we needed it we couldn’t get it tonight.”

On the differences in the two teams … “They got some stops when they needed to and we didn’t. Our defensive has kinda been slacking and the individual challenge is that we have been backing off a little bit and we need to be stepping forward instead of stepping back. You got to get it. We have a long road trip coming up here pretty soon and not many more home games and then we hit the East Coast, so we got to get it together and attack it and stay after it.”

On not getting the key plays at this point in the season … “It is frustrating, but you know, like tonight, Josh got back in the starting lineup, you know, which was good, but at the same time, he had maybe played three games lately. But, at the same time, everybody is still trying to get a feel for each other out there and you can tell that we don’t know each other just yet. But, at the same time there are some good things happening as well, so when you can throw all that out the window because when you play defense it don’t matter what the outcome or situation is. If you play good defense, most of the time you are going to win the game and the defense has been slacking. So, we have to address that and everything else should take care of itself. We just have to stay aggressive and attack the basket and for the most part we have to stop people.”

On wanting to get the win for Dirk on the night he scored his 20,000th career point …“Well I wanted to win for all reason. He hits the 20,000 plateau that is an amazing accomplishment for him, but you know it kinda sucks when you can’t get the win when he gets the mark. At the same time it is frustrating, we just got to get it together. We got to get it together now and get it going. We haven’t really hit our stride, we haven’t done nothing yet. Even though we are in second place, it seems like we just coasting a little bit. We don’t have that chemistry down to the fullest on both ends of the floor and we got to get that I can’t wait till we get it.”

Lakers Head Coach Phil Jackson

If Pau continues to refuse participating in my mind games, i’m gonna take a page out of Arenas’s book and defecate into his shoes.

Was this one of your best wins of the season …“You know, we have had other really good wins. When you have 30 it is hard to recall all of those, especially when you suffer from Alzheimer’s. I shouldn’t make fun of that, that was not appropriate. But, anyway, it was good to have Luke (Walton) in there, he had four assists, team leader in assists. He changed the game for us because we had an answer when he was in there and did a good job.”

On the play of the whole team … “I thought Ron (Artest) went out and played aggressive both at the start of the game and in the third quarter which is really good. Lamar (Odom) pushed the ball and did the things that we wanted him to do and got himself going in this ballgame which is great. And then Drew (Andrew Bynum) was kind of like rock for us out there tonight.”

On Jordan Farmar being a sparkplug … “Ya he was, he struggled from the field and he had his game and he played well.”

On Kobe Bryant’s play in the second half … “I thought he played opossum tonight a little bit, he sat out the first half so he could play the second and then, you know, once he got going it wasn’t any chance to rest him. I looked over at him in the second quarter and he said ‘I can’t go, you know’, so I said let’s re-start at halftime and see if you can go and he came back at the end of the half and said ‘I think I might be able to go let’s give it a shot’”

What got Ron Artest going tonight … “He had really good position and I thought he was decisive with the ball. They were some of the same stuff, but he was pretty decisive with the ball and knew what he wanted to do when he got the ball down there.”

On keeping Dallas in check … "Tempo was very good, we controlled that. They pushed it a little bit in the third quarter and I thought they were going to try and speed the game up, but we were able to match up.

Did you have no option but to leave Kobe Bryant in the game in the second half … “No, oh no. It was just a matter of sitting him down and getting stiff again because he sat down, so we opted to stay with him.”

Do you think Kobe was moving better in the second half … “Oh ya, he felt better. Decidedly. Um, we bypassed Shannon to leave Kobe in the ballgame which is always an issue for me to keep a guy on the bench that is a good player like that.”

Lakers Forward Ron Artest

I <3 L.A.

On their mindset knowing that Kobe wasn’t healthy … "Our mindset was the same, just go out there and play hard. I asked Kobe before the game I said ‘Are you alright?’ He said ‘No, I might not make it.’ So everybody said we’ve got to step it up. In the second half I said, ‘Are you ok?’ and he ‘Yeah, I’m good now’. But Dallas didn’t know that so they played him one-on-one and he hit that big shot.

Could you see why this team won the championship last year … "It’s a new year. We’ve been down that road where we know our potential, and what it could be. Now we’ve got nine losses so it’s our time we start worrying about what we have right here right now. Those losses snuck up on us really fast. It’s not comfortable with nine losses. From here on out we’ve got to give more effort."

Lakers Guard Derek Fisher

I believe in God and in elbowing Argentinians for the greater good.

On Dirk’s performance and if he turned out to be a better player than he thought he’d be …"I don’t know if anybody saw what he’s become. He’s a phenomenal talent, he ca score the ball, he can shoot the ball as well as a handful, to maybe 10 guys in the history of our game. He’s done a world of good for this franchise and I would assume the city of Dallas, and he deserves all the success that’s come upon him."

Was this a gut check kind of game with Kobe hurt and Pau out? "That was the idea coming into tonight’s game, just to continue to search for what it’s going to take for us collectively as a team to play the type of game we need to play, particularly on the road. Tonight was closer to that. With the injuries we seemed to play with a pace and composure and understanding of what we wanted to accomplish against the team we were playing against. We played a little more chess tonight maybe because of Kobe’s injuries, we had to and that helped us. Obviously we didn’t feel like our season was on the line in any way, but we did take these guys very seriously it being a back-to-back and the fourth in six nights. We weren’t going to allow ourselves to use any type of excuse in terms of why we couldn’t put ourselves in a position to win."