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NBA WESTERN CONFERENCE FINALS: SUNS v MAVERICKSJune 3, 2006Mike D'AntoniPHOENIX, ARIZONA: Game Six COACH MIKE D'ANTONI: You know, first give Dallas credit. They're a great team. They did what they're supposed to do to win. They showed a lot of guts coming back from 18 down. Give them all the credit in the world. And, you know, but our guys fought as hard as they could, ran out of steam. Third quarter we got bogged down and couldn't score. That's more or less the game. But, you know, we're not going to dwell on what was or what if or what all that stuff. We'll come back tomorrow and have some team meetings and Monday we'll get to work and try to bring us a championship. We're getting closer. We played to June 3rd this year and last year was June 1st. We're inching closer. Q. At the end of the first half, five points in five minutes? COACH MIKE D'ANTONI: You know, we had the 18. We just couldn't hold it. It's a mark of them, too. It's not always -- can't explain that. We just didn't play well, whatever. They played really well, and we couldn't hold it. We didn't make some big shots there. In the third quarter we were a little tentative, LB got in foul trouble and kind of screwed us up a little bit. But, again, give them the credit and we just fell a little short, and we're going to do something about that next year. Q. Mike, Steve obviously gave everything he had. COACH MIKE D'ANTONI: And more. Q. And more. But at the end he obviously looked tired. Next season, are you going to look obviously carefully at his minutes and maybe look at the point guard-backup point guard situation? COACH MIKE D'ANTONI: The thing is it's a little bit more complicated than that. And, you know, we'll address that in the off-season, but with someone like Amare coming back that takes the pressure off. Now you don't have to do something every time to create something, and that's one thing. The other thing, Leandro keeps developing and Boris keeps developing. So we'll be fine. And, yeah, we would like to take some minutes off. But, you know, what, Steve is 7 for 13 and he's 19 and 9. I would like to find somebody better than him tired. You can't find it. So, yeah, he was a little winded at the end. I think that's normal. I don't think that's something that -- I'd love to cut his minutes down. We want to keep him another six years. For that reason you're right. Q. Mike, not only did Leandro got in foul trouble, Raja did and Boris did. How much did fouls and turnovers hurt you tonight? COACH MIKE D'ANTONI: In the third quarter we had to take some guys out. We had to turn the ball over. We were out of synch, contribute a lot to them and how hard they were playing. They were closing out extremely well and we just didn't solve the problem. But, you know, Raja, probably the most courageous guy I've ever seen, and he was playing on half a leg, and just didn't have the pop that, you know, maybe would have helped. Maybe not. These are good guys. I'm not going to say that's the reason we got beat. But we would have played better if he was feeling better. A lot of little factors just didn't work out. Q. Mike, now that it's over could you talk about the strain of having to go through this with so many players out, and the margin of error that you had had to be very small throughout? COACH MIKE D'ANTONI: Yeah, it was, and that's why somebody -- you know, first of all, getting Tim Thomas was a stroke of luck, and him being available and when Kurt went down, he really saved the season at that point, because without him we couldn't have done all this. And so that filled in nicely. We got lucky with that. And then these other guys just kept being resilient in the sense of they just didn't hang their heads, and you know we went through a lot of stuff. We went through a lot of injuries and the margin of error wasn't great. And we just tried to, I tried to play my cards real tight. And, you know, I wasn't going to give in to fatigue and maybe in the end, you know what, we probably got tired. But I just didn't feel like it was prudent to not play the guys that I knew could win us a championship. And spread it out a little bit. I just didn't think we had enough at this level to do that. And it was just trying to mix and match, but that's where these guys' hearts come in. Boris tonight, Boris Diaw had 30 of 11. Here's a guy you talk about most improved, I would imagine that would -- in that category. And just guys like him and Leandro just stepping up and their character. You know, the character issue is the thing that's going to get us over the top. That's why we're going to be a winner next year. That's why we're going to win a championship here pretty soon because we've got some guys with hearts as big as Phoenix. Q. Mike, can you talk about that character and uniqueness and amplify it because they kept coming back and coming back to the very end? COACH MIKE D'ANTONI: Yeah, should have been in the dressing room right now. Thank you.
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