Game Notes
+ Vince Carter finished the season with 162 made three pointers, tying his career-best which he set in the 2000-01 season. Carter made at least one three pointer in each of his final 25 games of the season, the longest streak in his career (previously, it was 16 straight games, set twice).
+ The Mavericks played the entire first half without a turnover, but committed eight in the third quarter alone, finishing with 11 total.
+ Darren Collison scored a game-high 25 points while adding four assists, a couple steals and a block. It was his second-highest scoring game of the season, behind the 32 points he scored at Oklahoma City on 12/27. It was the first time he had topped 20 points since 3/18 at Atlanta.
+ Al-Farouq Aminu grabbed 14 rebounds in first quarter alone and finished with 20, breaking his previous career-high of 16.
+ The Mavericks have nine players with contracts that expire or have options headed into the off-season.
+ It was nice to see standing ovations from the fans when the veterans left, and again, as the final horn sounded. It's been a trying season for them (us), but everyone stuck it out until the end.
+ This was the last game the New Orleans Hornets will ever play. Welcome to the NBA, Pelicans. The Mavericks were 44-22 all-time against the Hornets, beating them 3-1 in the season series.
Rick Carlisle
(There's some hilarity at the end of the video I recommend watching -- basically, Rick breaking out his full-fledged, sarcastic side)
"We weren't perfect. We demonstrated we're not perfect, but guys hung in. We needed three guys at the center position, two guys at every other position [tonight]."
(on success of the season) "I expected us to battle back, and I expected us to get to, and I thought we would over .500. It didn't happen, but we never lost our spirit, we never lost our belief and our effort. Those are all good things, but I'm not going to try to blow sunshine up your butt and tell you that we're happy with being .500, because that's not how things go here. I understand that, and you guys understand that too. We do have some positives to take from this."
Vince Carter
"Very admirable of our team coming into the season that we were able to stick together. Coming into the second part of the season, we weren't even talked about. We weren't even in the race considerations or playoff conditions. We were able to stick together and everyone was able to buckle down and focus."
Darren Collison
(on finishing strong) "I thought I had a solid year. I'm a young player and I'm still growing and I definitely have a lot of learn. For our team it is disappointing that we didn't make it to the playoffs. I'm hurt about that situation, but when we come around next year we'll be a much better team because of this experience."
(on expectancies) "I thought we would be a playoff team. I felt like we could do something special, but when Dirk missed like 20-some games, that obviously didn't go our way."
Shawn Marion
"I'm glad we got the win tonight and were able to close out the season and stay .500."
"Cuban and Donnie have got some work to do this summer to get us back to where we want to be and where we should be."
Hornets center Robin Lopez
"We had a lot of turnovers...it's not really how we wanted to end the season. They really pushed the ball and we let them get to the paint too much."