Quote board: “Just a little bit lucky, but we’ll take it”

The heart attack Mavericks were at it again Tuesday night, defeating the Los Angeles Clippers 103-101. Though they held and surrendered a 20+ point lead again, it was a very entertaining back and forth affair that the Clippers had many chances of winning. But Dallas would not be denied. Here’s what the team and coach Kidd had to say after the win.

Luka Doncic

(On what he saw on the 3-pointer at the end of the shot clock late in the fourth quarter…)

“I was a bit lucky. I just shot it and it was two seconds on the floor. It went in. Just a little bit lucky, but we’ll take it.”

(On if he’s planning to play tomorrow…)

“We’ll see about that. I think tomorrow me and coach are going to decide about it. It’s been a long time playing basketball, not a lot of break, but we’ll see tomorrow.”

(On what it feels like to see Dorian Finney-Smith and Reggie Bullock have the nights they did…)

“It’s amazing. I’m so happy for them. A lot of people put a lot of pressure on Reggie [Bullock], talking about he can’t make a shot. The things he does on the court for us doesn’t show up on the statistics a lot, but today he showed that he’s a great player. A lot of times it doesn’t show in the statistics – the way he defends, and Doe-Doe [Dorian Finney-Smith] obviously too, but they are key players to us for sure.”

(On if he got any explanation on the technical foul…)

“No, I deserved that one. I talked to Curtis [Blair] after he called it, and we agreed. I deserved that one.”

(On what he took away from grinding out the win after losing a big lead…)

“I think we have to learn, especially the third quarter, you know, we’ve been blowing leads. We have to learn how to not blow leads. But, at the same time, our first half they scored 32 points or something like that. That was amazing. You don’t see it much in an NBA game. I’ll take that one away from it.”

Dorian Finney-Smith

(On his 7 3-pointers…)

“I just play off of everybody. They were finding me tonight. Came out, I saw [Ivica] Zubac was guarding me, and Luka [Dončić] said ‘shoot 10 3s.’ So, I was letting them go.”

(On the second half…)

“We just got to come out of halftime and play better. They were getting downhill, you could tell that they started to get to the rim more and getting fouls. So, we just got to come out of the half better and try to put them away. We had them by 25 – we got to stomp on guy’s necks.”

Jason Kidd

(On tonight’s game...)

“We’re giving up a lot of big leads, just like we drew it up. That third quarter – we just missed shots and we didn’t defend. Give the Clippers credit. They came out in the second half and put a lot of pressure on us. I thought the group handled the situation with grace in the sense of things weren’t going our way. But we didn’t self-destruct. We just stayed together and found a way. Reggie [Bullock] made some big shots.

“There’s a lot of trust especially with the way Reggie has been shooting the ball of late. And then Doe [Dorian Finney-Smith] – seven 3s. I don’t know if that’s the most he’s ever shot, 13, so we’ve got to get him more shots. Someone told me our record with Doe scores 10 or more points is pretty impressive. We’ve got to put a little more pressure on Doe to score 10 points or more. But again, Luka [Dončić] steps up and makes a big shot for us. Tomorrow we’re going to need our bench. We can’t just rely on C-Wood [Christian Wood] to carry the bench with the 15 points. But the nice thing is we got the a win at home and we’ve got another again tomorrow.”

(On managing tomorrow’s minutes following increased playing time tonight...)

“Nope, not worried. Those guys are well conditioned and understand what’s at stake in this game. We put ourselves in a position to win it, and we can only focus on that. Tomorrow we’ll figure out who’s playing and who’s not.”

(On trouble holding on to big leads...)

“I think just understanding it’s hard to play with the lead in this league, especially with the way everybody shoots 3s, how many attempts there are. If you start to have turnovers, that first half we played pretty good defense; 15 of 17 points knowing that that group was a veteran group and that they’re going to come out in the second half. But we got good looks there in that third quarter, we just didn’t make them. We had some good looks at layups, we had wide-open 3s. Sometimes when you don’t score, you’re going to have to play a little defense – but we didn’t. We gave up the big lead. I thought our body language was a lot better than it had been in the past of just being frustrated giving up big leads. We stayed with it and found a way to win.”

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