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NBA WESTERN CONFERENCE FINALS: SUNS v MAVERICKSMay 26, 2006Mike D'AntoniDALLAS, TEXAS: Game Two COACH MIKE D'ANTONI: That was a great game. We had shots to win, and it's about the two-minute mark, three-minute mark we hit about three threes. I thought we could have put the fear into them and we didn't knock them down. And give them credit, they came down and executed and we just didn't quite get it done. Q. I know you guys rely a lot on the 3 but did you become a little too 3 reliant in the last few minutes? COACH MIKE D'ANTONI: Now that we miss we could have. If you would have told me before, no. We play our game, and we're not going -- we're not going to question what we do and we're going to keep going forward, and you know those are good shots. And they're good shots from guys that usually knock them down. And for us to win, we need to knock 'em down. Q. Barbosa did such a good job of replacing Bell in the Lakers series, how would you evaluate how he did tonight? COACH MIKE D'ANTONI: He didn't make the shots. He'll make the shots. He'll be fine. He'll settle down. He'll have a good series. And bottom line is we came here and we won one game. And now we have home court advantage. We gotta hold and we'll do that. Q. Can you survive with Steve only taking one shot in the second half? COACH MIKE D'ANTONI: Let me see. 105-98 -- nope. It says it right there. Guys, you just play the game. And we had great shots and we don't -- what we don't do is only got two, this guy only got four shots, this guy got 10 points, this guy got 20. We don't play that way. The ball moves, find the guy open. Guys knock 'em down, that's why we have five guys skilled on the floor because that's how we play. Today the guys that found the ball open didn't knock them down enough times. So we play a pretty simple game and we don't question it, and we gave everything we had, and we had 'em on the ropes for a while. We controlled most of the game. We're happy with leaving Dallas with one. We let one slip away but you could also say we got lucky the last game because we came from 9 down. So we're in pretty good shape. We're going to go to Phoenix and hold serve. If we do that we win the series. Q. Did you expect Josh Howard to play and were you surprised that he plays well with -- COACH MIKE D'ANTONI: I'm not surprised he plays well. The guy can play. If he's out there you know he's going to be 100 percent. He did a great job. And that's something we'll have to address. He did a super job. Q. Coach, you did rely on Nash, though, to get things going at the end of the last game. And this time, again, not even putting up a shot until there were three seconds left, was that the strategy? How does that happen? COACH MIKE D'ANTONI: Their strategy. They doubled him and he kicked the guys open. You know -- we could have said don't double him and let him shoot but they didn't listen. And that's just the way the game is. And if we have our -- you know, Leandro Barbosa is the second leading or third or whatever field goal percentage shooter from threes, gotta say Leandro take the shot don't pass it up and try to find Steve somewhere. We don't play that way. We're not going to play that way. Q. Do you feel fatigue at all was a factor down the stretch? COACH MIKE D'ANTONI: No. No. Q. How concerned are you with the free throw discrepancy tonight? COACH MIKE D'ANTONI: Ten of them at the end of the game. Ten of them at the end of the game. When we were struggling doing it. It would be nice if we got some more foul shots but we didn't shoot many during the regular season and we don't need a foul, we need to play a little better defense and we'll do a better job. Q. What was the difference with what Diop gave them -- the difference between what Diop gave them compared to what the centers gave to them in Game 1? COACH MIKE D'ANTONI: I don't know. Let me see. Gave 'em four points. Got 11 rebounds. I'm not worried about that. That's not what -- he played well and they're a good team and they're a great team. And again we missed our shots. We had a chance to beat 'em. We led a lot of the way. Led at half time. We came down the last five minutes. We had all open shots. We missed 'em. Game over. Let's go home and we'll go to Phoenix. All right. Guys. Thank you.
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