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NBA FINALS: HEAT v MAVERICKSJune 13, 2006Avery JohnsonMIAMI, FLORIDA: Game Three Q. I was wondering if you spoke to your team at all about the importance of getting off to a better start than maybe you had in the first two games, given that this one you're not going to have the crowd behind you. AVERY JOHNSON: Yes, we feel that's very important. We haven't gotten off to the greatest starts. Game 2, we had ten fast break opportunities, and we only were successful in two of them; four missed shots, a couple of easy ones. We ran into a referee, four turnovers. So hopefully we can get off to a better start defensively and offensively. Q. With the allure of what Miami has to offer and potentially being here for a week, do you have to say anything to your players about staying focused and looking back at '99 when you were with the Spurs and Pop had to say something to you guys when you were in New York? AVERY JOHNSON: Yeah, he did, and we did the same thing here. That was pretty much my opening statement to the team, and just to know how to try to manage distractions. This is a big stage right now, and you'll have time -- at that point I was saying two and a half, three weeks, do whatever you want to do. But we're here for business. Overall, I like our business approach to The Finals, and we've managed ourselves pretty good on the road throughout the year. Q. What did Pop say? AVERY JOHNSON: Pretty much the same thing. New York City obviously had a lot of distractions like Miami. Q. You guys were pretty vocal about saying we haven't seen your best basketball yet. Is there a game you can point to recently that was, the Phoenix series, San Antonio, the last game that you said, "that's us"? AVERY JOHNSON: I think it's obviously started for us in the Memphis series. We put together probably, you know, a couple of good games there. In the Spurs series, I would say Game 2 was a pretty good game for us. Obviously Game 7, a lot of times it's not about the large margin of victory as much as it is about a gutsy performance. I thought that game was as mentally tough as we've been all year; Game 2 against Phoenix. There are different games that we like the way we played on both ends. But again, we're just trying to get better as the series go on. Q. When you left the pregame before Game 2, you said you had 350 pounds on your mind. Since then, Shaq has been beaten up pretty badly and criticized, fined by the league. What's your experience when a player goes through that the next time you see him? AVERY JOHNSON: Well, you know, he has a lot of pride. He's probably going to come out and try to dominate. Just for us, we've had situations like that before where a guy maybe wasn't playing some of his better basketball, but if he comes out and dominates and we didn't win, it's just another good single-game performance. So we just want to focus on the team and hopefully just as much as we have to deal with Shaq, which you know, makes a coach lose sleep, when you've got Wade and Walker and a lot of guys on their team that can hurt you. Q. Along those lines with Wade, do you think that you have done things to him that none of the other teams before have, and are you noticing that perhaps he's playing a little bit differently; he has not been feeling well and he's just starting to come back, he said? AVERY JOHNSON: For us, when you win, there's always trickery that the winning team is doing. Their players are playing so much better; the coaches, you know, we have these rocket science ideas, and I've been on the other side. There's no trickery here. We're just trying to play solid basketball. There are certain things we try to get accomplished on the floor. Fortunately for us, Wade has missed some shots. You know, hopefully he can keep missing shots. Shaq has missed some shots; he's missed some free throws; we hope that that continues to happen. But there's no rocket science here. It's just, you know, we've been on the winning side, but we don't have all the answers.
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