Scott Skiles Again Quotations

My guys almost every night battle really hard. They've had a lot of things go against them in late game situations and we haven't been able to seize the moment. Lately, we've been able to do that and our guys appear to growing up as a team.

We dug a 20-point hole against a good team at home. It's very difficult at that point to come back and win.

This is a different team than last season. It's obvious that it is. I mean, we haven't had the same amount of fight that we had before. Unfortunately, too many times, when things have gotten a little bit tough, we've rolled over. It happened again tonight.

We made it interesting again at the end but pretty much got dominated again from beginning to end.

The problem is our backs are against the wall every game right now. Somehow we have to convince the guys that.

We kind of felt at halftime it was one of our poorer halves in quite a while. But it was a great second half for us. We were much more aggressive defensively and had at least 25 points off turnovers. It was a quality win against a team playing as well as anyone in the league right now.

We should have won that second game of the season at New Jersey. We missed a free throw and gave up a three-point play basically at the buzzer. It's a game we felt like we should have won. I guess it is nice to pull out a win against a team that's dominated us.

We should have won that second game of the season at New Jersey (a 100-99 loss). It is nice to put one behind you against a team that has kind of dominated us.

We haven't yet in either game played the kind of defense that we've played the whole year to get a gauge on how we can play against (Miami).

Our defense was good again tonight and we needed it. We sort of went cold in the second half. We went 12-for-42 in the second half. To win a game when you only make 12 field goals in the second half, obviously our defense was good.

Even when we got it close, Jamison got away from us. He's been a key guy whenever we've played against them. If we would've been able to do a good job on him and make him shoot a poor percentage, we've had some success. Arenas is normally going to have a pretty good game; it's hard to stop him. But Jamison got away from us.

I'm happy that we played hard, but that should be a given. We need to learn from these experiences and make progress. We've had too many times this year when we've come out in the third quarter and haven't been as sharp. It happened again tonight. I can't fault anybody's effort. Our guys fought right to the end, but at this level, there are no moral victories. It's a game we should have won.

I'm happy for Tyson. I'm sure a good amount of grief he's gone through has been self-imposed. He's kind of tortured himself for some of the games he hasn't played well in. He's really broke out the last three games and he was obviously excellent again tonight.

It wasn't like we had a total letdown or anything; we just softened up enough to let him get going. And once he got going, it was very difficult to get any momentum back. Early in the third, we went under a couple of times on screens. He made one, and that really opened his eyes. He put one right in the middle. That's a lesson that needs to be learned -- playing against great players like that, just one possession can get them going. Obviously, if you look at the whole year, the four games we played them, he's averaged well over 30 points against us. We didn't get it done against him this year.