Jerry Sloan Playing Quotations

Carlos is playing pretty strong. He should probably start to be about at the level he's playing at now after being out for a long period of time. He's finding a rhythm. He played extremely well tonight. He's played extremely well for a couple weeks now.

He's (Palacio) terrific, he was terrific down the stretch. He made his free throws; he took the ball to the basket and just played extremely well. He seemed to be very confident playing in that position.

I think it's been pretty good for most of our guys here because they got a chance to play some. They're not playing garbage minutes. We're trying to win ballgames with them.

I thought we executed our offense pretty well. We're still alive and that's the important thing. The games mean something ... You just keep fighting and playing until the season is over and see what happens.

I think we do believe in the offense now. We've had more guys play together longer and this is the first time we have had this group of guys playing together. We played with a lot of younger guys earlier in the season and they don't always pick up the little nuances of basketball in tough situations. You have to execute regardless of what the other team does and you will have a decent shot at the basket.

I thought our guys were playing hard tonight. I really thought we were playing hard. Dallas gets to it and they get whatever they want and go inside and really take it to you. They've got guys that can put it on the floor, they got a lot guys that can pass and they got guys that can shoot it out on the floor. You have to be really good to try to stop them.

I think they've always been fairly responsive. Everybody has their own way of playing and everybody has their strengths. In order to get 12 guys happy in that situation, it's kind of difficult at times to do. But I think for the most part they've done a pretty good job.

I was beginning to wonder. You don't get yourself better by playing at half-speed. You've got to get yourself going so you get into a good rhythm and you don't get hurt. That's how you avoid injuries. Playing this game casually, you can really get hurt.

We just couldn't keep them in front of us. We couldn't keep them from penetrating to the basket. They got about everything they wanted tonight. They were playing in such a comfort zone that we couldn't even begin to shut them down.

We couldn't seem to do too much against their zone, but we kept playing hard.

We have a little bit of stability, more so than the beginning of the year, so we have a better idea of how to play with each other. But it has taken us a little while to figure that out. Our players have to know who we are playing against, and they have to be ready to play no matter what.

We fought at the beginning of the second half and then they just annihilated us. They defended us well and we had a very tough time scoring inside. If we keep playing like that, we won't get into the playoffs.

They're playing harder, but they have to learn to play even harder. This is not a casual business. When we play casual you see how ineffective we are.

It went crazy -- throwing the ball away, turning the basketball over, not playing like we're supposed to play. You can't play a streak game like that against a team that knows how to play the pass.

These guys are excited about winning. They're excited about playing and pulling for each other. We didn't have that two weeks ago. We didn't have all our players (because of injury). Now we have a little bit of an idea of when our guys will play. Before it was potluck.