Cleveland Cavaliers vs. Miami Heat: Quotes from players and coaches

Personally, I was speechless after this game. Unfortunately, the players and coaches don't get to be speechless when the media is asking questions. This was a tough one for everybody to handle, but they dealt with it admirably.

Byron Scott:

"I thought it was a great effort. Our guys played hard. They played about as hard as they can play. The third and fourth quarter, I thought Miami did a heck of a job of switching everything. We got a little stagnant and stuck with the ball until we figured it out."

"Defensively, we did some very good things. I thought in the third quarter we gave (Shane) Battier and Ray (Allen) way too many good looks. That kind of kept their run going. In the fourth quarter, especially the last five minutes, I thought we buckled down again. We started to get some stops and we started to rebound the ball a little bit better. Overall, defensively, I thought we played a pretty solid game."

Tyler Zeller and Tristan Thompson both played pretty well. That didn't go unnoticed by the Cavaliers' head coach.

"I was extremely happy with the way Tyler bounced back. I thought Tyler and Tristan played great. I wish I could have played Tyler more but because of some of the lineups that they had out there, it's hard to keep him out there at times against some of those smaller guys."

Tristan Thompson

"It's tough to swallow. We competed tonight and our effort was there, but we had mental lapses in the third quarter. They're a championship ball team and you can't afford that to happen."

"You knew they were going to put extra pressure on, so we knew as a ballclub that we had to come out and be more patient and try to not make too many turnovers. Unfortunately, that didn't happen. We threw the ball away, myself included. It's tough, but stuff we can control and I think we beat ourselves tonight."

Daniel Gibson

"There are definitely no excuses and we've talked plenty of times about our third quarters and being able to finish games. I think that as a team for us to take that next step and become a playoff team, we have to understand that the game is 48 minutes long; not 24, not 36. You have to put a full game together if you want to win."

You can read the rest of the postgame quotes over at Cavs.com.