[kg_veteran]

Here are some postgame quotes. Those of you that think Nellie NEVER says anything nice about his team/players, take note of his comments about Terry, Dampier, and Harris (Ape, you might want to read the Dampier comments twice, since you think the coaching staff hates him [img]i/expressions/face-icon-small-smile.gif[/img] ).

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<u>Mavericks Head Coach Don Nelson</u>
We had great play out of our point guards and I commend both of them. Dirk wasn’t as sharp as we have seen him, but he ended up with some decent numbers. For the first time, I wanted to practice tomorrow and Avery (Johnson) wanted to give him the day off.

On the balance scoring:
I love it. We have been scoring a lot at home. 118 points is still a lot of points no matter where you play. I thought Terry set the stage by making his shots when he had them. He got into areas where he was very effective and he only had one turnover. I put the rookie in and he was just as good. I think that is the first time that I have been pleased with both point guards in the same game. They both were strong tonight. There was a lot of encouraging things tonight.

On Terry moving with the ball:
It’s a bad habit (him standing holding the ball) and you have to keep reminding him. We are working with him and I think it is paying dividends. Avery was a great point guard for many years and he is a wonderful teacher.

On the center & point guard:
We got good play out of the two positions that are the most important in basketball: point guard and center. I thought we were pretty consistent. Damp rebounded and was a presence.

On defending Kobe Bryant:
I want to do better, but I was satisfied. He’s a very aggressive player right now. He’s a hard cover. We had a couple breakdowns. Any time you make a mistake on a guy like that, he is going to score. We covered him down the stretch extremely well.

<u>Mavericks Forward Josh Howard</u>
On defending Kobe Bryant and containing him in the first quarter:
He’s a great player and he still put up 32 points. I felt we did well, me and my team. That was big to jump out to an early lead which we have been doing for the last week and a half. I had a lot of help from my teammates. That’s one thing I credit it too, is my teammates helping me out because there were a lot of times that if they weren’t helping me out, he would have beaten me.

On why Kobe Bryant was able to score rapidly in the second and third quarters:
His team was down and he needed to put up more shots. He got a lot of open shots off of second-chance rebounds.

<u>Mavericks Guard Devin Harris</u>
On the Dallas point-guard play from he and Jason Terry:
Jason had a really good game. We got the ball moving forward in the first half and really got it going. Jason was the hot shooter. I just came in and tried to keep get a few minutes off the bench and we were fortunate to play well tonight.

On hitting the three-pointer at the buzzer to end the first half:

On how Don Nelson’s pushing the point-guard position is starting to really pay off:
He has been pushing us really hard and it is only going to make us better. We haven’t played great as of yet, but we have the best games ahead of us now. We are starting to really get a hold of the system and we are running with it.