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NBA EASTERN CONFERENCE FINALS: MAGIC v CAVALIERS

May 24, 2009

Mike Brown

ORLANDO, FLORIDA: Game Three

Magic Â– 99
Cavaliers - 89

COACH BROWN: It will be interesting to go back and look at the tape and look at the fouls. You know, to send them to the free-throw line 51 times is a lot. And the times we have to be careful defensively is when we do it out on the floor, we have to do a better job of not fouling, I think, out on the floor. But those are the ones we will go back and take a good look at it.
I thought besides some of those fouls way out on the floor, our defense kept us in the game. I thought our guys played hard. I thought they were in tune mentally on the defense end of the floor throughout most of the game, and I thought our defense gave us a chance.
Offensively, obviously we need to be better in the next game. I thought we didn't shoot the three-ball well at 19 percent for the game. And then we turned the ball over quite a bit.
You turn the ball over and give up 21 points off those 15 turnovers compared to their 13 and 10, and that's a big difference.
I tell you, despite some of the numbers, you know, you give Dwight Howard credit. He knocked down his free-throws, especially in that fourth quarter, despite some of the numbers. LeBron scoring 41 and the way we defended, we gave ourselves a chance.
It is one game. We got to watch the tape, meet with our guys tomorrow, and get ready for Game 4.

Q. Mike, they have beaten you four of six this year, seven out of ten the last two years. Is it just a matchup thing they give you problems with?
COACH BROWN: They are a good team, no doubt about it. They do cause some matchup problems for us.
They have some very good basketball players. I think four of their players got voted to the All-Star game this year, with Jameer getting hurt. And they are well-coached, so you do got to give them credit.
The playoffs is a different season. You look back in the past and some of the things we went through in the regular season against a team like Washington, a team like Detroit, where they really had our number during the regular season. And come play-off time, it is a different game.
I thought tonight really we gave ourselves a chance a couple of times when we cut it to 4 with the ball and things like that, and they just made some plays. They made some pretty good plays to get the win.
So you got to give them credit. We're confident. We feel like we can win. And like I said, it is one game. There is still a lot of basketball left.

Q. In Games 1 and 2 you never trailed by more than four points. So how important was the start for Orlando tonight getting out to the lead and leading by as much as ten in the first quarter?
COACH BROWN: I think Rafer did a nice job coming out. He did a nice job making plays and hitting shots. So you got to give him credit.
But we felt -- we felt the pace of the game was pretty good the entire time for us.
They obviously are a good defensive team, but we missed some shots that we felt we normally make. And then, again, we have to look at all the fouls that we committed to see where we're committing them, how we're committing them. But it was great -- a great job by Rafer carrying them in the beginning of the game to get them that lead.

Q. LeBron has obviously played very well. What do you have to do to get the other guys involved and to produce -- to give him some support?
COACH BROWN: Got to keep shooting the ball. Z had ten shots, Delonte had 11, Mo had 16. Just got to keep shooting the ball and keep trying to go make plays. We have to keep trying to call their number.
Those guys are very good shooters, and they've come through us -- they've come through us the entire year, and we don't see it being any different during this series.

Q. Do you think you guys relied a little bit too much on the jumpshot just in general, because nobody seemed like they were making them?
COACH BROWN: It would be interesting to see, you know. We took some 3s late in the game, so -- that you could kind of throw down the window because we were down and we were pressing a little bit to try to get back in the game quickly. Orlando is the three-point shooting team, and they took 17 of them tonight. We took 26.
It will be interesting to see if -- to see where they were from. But I think some of our looks throughout the flow of the game or the meat of the game were pretty good, were pretty good looks.
If we're stepping into some wide-open looks, then, hey, I'm going to live with that, because we have good shooters. But, you know, for us on the flip side, I thought we did -- I mean, especially Bron, you look at Bron, he has 24 free-throw attempts. He did a nice job attacking the rim. We just try to get some other bodies in there and attacking that rim.

Q. Dwight Howard got into foul trouble kind of early in the game. Was that one of the strategies you guys were looking to utilize in order to kind of get him out kind of early?
COACH BROWN: Yeah. I mean, any time we can get Dwight in foul trouble, we'll take it. And the sooner it can happen, the better.

Q. What does it say when you have a team go to the line 51 times? What does that say about this series, this game?
COACH BROWN: I thought it was a physical contest tonight. I thought both teams were physical. But I know one area that we'll need to make sure we take a look at is fouling too far away from the hoop.
And I thought tonight there were times when we fouled up the floor. But it will be interesting to see -- to watch the tape to see how they called the game, because that's a whole heck of a lot of free-throws to get their 51 times in a 48-minute game.

Q. Did you have any problem with the elbow Mo took in terms of it being a dirty play?
COACH BROWN: That's a good question. I don't know if it affected or not. I know Mo had a nice flow going. I did not see a replay, so I'm not sure. It will be -- again, that will be another thing to take a look at, to see what happened. The officials made the call, they reviewed it. You know, you just got to trust that they saw it and they saw it correctly.

End of FastScripts

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