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Nets vs. Mavericks: James Harden, Jeff Green, and Steve Nash Top Quotes

See what the Brooklyn Nets had to say after their 115-98 loss to the Dallas Mavericks.

STEVE NASH

On having win streak end while shorthanded:

“I think everyone’s frustrated that we just had a little, just shorter obviously options tonight. You’re missing two All-Star starters, but even beyond that, Jeff went out, Tyler couldn’t play. It just stretched everything and put us in territory where a lot of guys hadn’t had a lot of minutes together. So, frustrating, but that’s the nature of this season. I’ve said that time and time again. We’re gonna have all sorts of nights where we’re gonna mix and match, play different things, and tonight I think we weren’t quite good enough, but Dallas played well and one or two too many factors that went against us.”

On bench production:

"We usually take James out first, not first, but we take him out early so we can get him back in with the second unit. Obviously tonight we couldn’t do that. We were just standing a little it and like I said, a bunch of guys who hadn’t played a lot, hadn’t played a lot together, and Dallas played well. It’s a good team. We weren’t maybe quite up to it tonight and needed to make more shots, turn the all over less, and it wasn’t to be.”

On size difference:

“Porzingis started making shots on his little mid-range posts in the third quarter. But you know, when you can’t match them offensively and make shots with them and have the weapons that we normally have, your defense has got to be exceptional, and we were small, and they were extremely big, especially that starting unit. That was a factor for sure as well.”

JAMES HARDEN

On effect of playing shorthanded:

“We fought in that first half. We were down double-digits, fought and cut it to four points at halftime. That second half, we just didn’t have any legs on our entire team after losing a couple players. It was legs. Every time we made a run, they countered it and made a run. Credit to them. They played pretty well tonight. We just didn’t have it. Throughout the course of a year, there’s going to be games like that. We just chalk it up, prepare and get ready for San Antonio.”

On turnovers:

“I mean, me. I had six turnovers. A lot of them were careless, a lot of them were just not good plays, trying to thread the needle and whatnot. You give an offensive team like that an opportunity, and they did a great job of capitalizing. So we’ve just got to be better. I’ve got to be better individually in securing the basketball, and we will be better.”

On third quarter:

“Run out of juice. We couldn’t get our shots off. Defensively, we couldn’t get stops, mental mistakes on both ends. We didn’t rebound the basketball, I didn’t rebound the basketball, boxing out my man, just small details that we needed more times than not to win this game, especially being down a number of guys. So lesson learned for us, and the good thing about this league is we have another opportunity in two days and we’ll be prepared.”

JEFF GREEN

On the loss:

"They played well on both ends. And they were aggressive on defense, took us out a lot of what we were trying to do. They made runs when it mattered, and they got stops when it mattered. And, we did the opposite.”"

On playing shorthanded:

“No, this is a no excuse team. If you’re on the floor, you're going to play as hard as you can. They just got the best of us tonight. And they got the win. That's all it really was. It's not about us running out of gas or anything. We just didn't come ready to play and they won.”

On Dallas defense:

"They were aggressive on defense, jump into passing lanes, made us speed up a little bit. Forced us to turn the ball over and they scored on the opposite end of that and in order for us to win, especially when we got guys out, we have to do better. We have to take care of the ball, we have to make sure we get a good shot every time and we can’t allow their defense to turn us over like that and then for us to allow them to score on our turnovers like that."