Avery Johnson Team Quotations

We feel adding Doug Christie to our team is giving us the best chance to win a championship.

We hope we're back, as like any Western Conference team that's going to playoffs. But we've got too much work to do.

I don't know what I am going to have to do to get this team charged up, but I am willing to do anything. ... I'll run around a track, bench press, whatever you want me to do. I am open for any ideas.

I don't want our team to misconstrue the message of us trying to get to the next level. We're not going to get there in one night, all right? No matter what's been said over the All-Star break or what race we're supposed to be in, it's all meaningless right now.

He's got to play more minutes and be more responsible. That's why it's team game. You can have a 10th man in the starting lineup. We have guys one through 12 that we feel good about putting in games.

We thought we got our defense under us in the first half and kind of set the tone for the rest of the game. We had a little lull defensively in the third quarter, but they're a very good offensive basketball team and they weren't going to come out of the locker room lying down.

It didn't make any sense to blow this team up and have Dirk come back and not recognize any of his teammates.

It is a disappointing loss. When we come to the games we try and give ourselves a chance to win. I wasn't trying to rally the team by getting ejected; I think it was more a difference of opinion.

I think the Mavericks -- our team -- we've kind of forgotten who we are as basketball team and what made us successful. It wasn't shots on the offense. It wasn't holding the ball. We've kind of looked like some of our old teams with one guy pounding the ball instead of ball movement and player movement. We haven't been physical. Is that because we've been fatigued? I don't know. I know we've been a step slow. I can see that -- mentally and physically. We just need to get back to being who we are, and I think that will give us a better chance to win some of these games.

I was concerned about this game. Byron Scott has done as good a job as anybody in the league, and they have that team in playoff contention.

I thought this was a gutsy performance by our team. Cleveland really jumped out on us and put us in a big hole and our team responded in the second half. Our third quarter defense was pretty special.

Our team is not playing enough of a 48-minute game and that's the disappointing thing. We know it's tough to win road games. This was a hot team team we were playing, give them credit. But you can't play 18-20 minutes of a second half and expect to beat any NBA team.

Our team has made some progress with being proactive on defense. There's a certain mentality where I wanted us to be. ... Forget statistics, forget about how many points we're giving up, field goal percentage, all that stuff - I think our body language is moving in a way that we're trying to be a little more proactive defensively.

Overall it was a good team effort and we were fortunate enough to be able to rest some guys in the fourth quarter.

I sure hope we're different. We seem to have been playing more physical basketball on the defensive end. Again, that was just one of those special games, the guy got on fire and obviously, since that's happened, we're not the team he's scored the most points against.

I'm so happy we went through that little period that we went through, because it seems to have brought our team closer together.

I'm so happy we went through that little period, because it seems to have brought our team closer together. Nobody pointed fingers. At the same time, we played against some really good basketball teams that were really hot.

I wasn't trying to rally the team by getting ejected. I think it was more just a difference of opinion. We were dealing with things the whole game, and we thought that we had a legitimate beef with the way they were playing Dirk. I guess we were wrong.

We had a little talk with the team at halftime and they seemed to respond.

Yeah, that puts them at an advantage I would say. So what I'll try to do is when he puts his four guys out there, I'll try to have combinations. I'll try to play Steve and Dirk together since they played together. And maybe I'll play Yao and T-Mac. So maybe we at least have four guys out there . . . two and two. And then throw in somebody else. . . . Maybe Kobe (Bryant); he's a whole team himself.

We had some good moments of team defense, but there's nothing really to get too excited about, ... I thought the big guys really tried. They're making a conscious effort to improve.

We're all disappointed with this loss. You have a team that has a lot of character and they are very competitive. We are just disappointed with the way we finished the game.

We put out a lot of energy out there but it was a total team effort. It was a hard-fought overtime game and fortunately we came out on the winning end. They're tough when you lose them and they're tough when you win them.

The players challenged themselves to pick it up defensively. We didn't shoot the ball particularly well tonight. We had a good team effort. We had a lot of contribution from a lot of different people.

Fifteen offensive rebounds...when did a Dallas team last do that. We put a lot of emphasis on that this year.

We were fortunate enough get some stops and play some tough, hard-nosed defense. This is the fifth win on a five-game road trip. We have been on the road eleven or twelve days and we played some pretty good defense against a team scoring 150, 120 and 115 points, so I am awfully proud of our guys.

This team doesn't like losing one in a row.

They were in sync. It really shows how great of a team sport basketball can be when you have everybody on the same page.

They had a great start to the game. They came out and really tried to throw a knockout punch on us. Fortunately, we were able to withstand it, come back and get our defense set and play some pretty good defense against a high-scoring team in the second, third and fourth quarters.

That first-quarter defense probably was as good as I've seen in a long time. No matter who you do it to, when you hold a team to 10 points in a quarter, that's pretty special.

It was nice to get the big lead and to spread out the minutes a little bit. But we are a flawed basketball team and we are still working through some things. We have to keep working hard and trying to get better.

It was a gutsy win for us tonight. That's a scrappy team over there. They've been playing some very good basketball and we don't take anything for granted. (Stackhouse) stepped up tonight and I thought Devin really came on and gave us a big lift in overtime.