Alston and Barnes each received a technical foul for that and then another when they squared off. McGrady and Steve Nash also faced off, earning technical fouls, and Shaquille O'Neal, who shoved McGrady and Alston to the floor, received another technical.

"He took a cheap shot at me, basically," Alston said. "I'm trying to set a screen for Tracy and he just took a cheap shot at me. Look at the replay. The ref is standing right there watching it. It's a dirty play by him. He raises his arm. Good thing he didn't connect to my face and knock some teeth out.

"I don't know if he was frustrated by his game or their game. There was no call for that, no call for the reaction, really. Sometimes, you just react."

--For two days of practices, Rick Adelman spoke of little as much as the need for more movement. This makes sense because for most of the season, he spoke of little as often as the need to improve their ball and body movement.

With two days to work on it since the loss to the Lakers, Adelman said the habit of standing around, waiting for Tracy McGrady to create or Yao Ming to draw double-teams.

"They're used to going to Tracy or going to Yao and playing off them," Adelman said. "You can go to them, you can go to Ron (Artest), but you need to have some movement first to make the defense not locked in on them so much. I think we can accomplish the same thing after two or three passes and have the defense shift, and then you can go to them, where they really have an advantage. Now, we have no advantage.

"Like (against) the Lakers. They have two big guys at the basket and there is nowhere to go and it kills us. The only time we played well in that game was in the first quarter when we made outside shots. Really Tracy is the one guy who can put in on the floor and create for everybody else. But even the standstill jumpers are not there, and if we go to Tracy and Ron with everybody standing around, it takes Yao completely out of the game."

QUOTE TO NOTE: ""We just needed to come out and compete and play hard. The L.A. game, we came out and played one half. I don't think we came out of the locker room in the second half. We needed this just to prove to ourselves if we play hard for the whole game, we give ourselves a great chance to win." -- Chuck Hayes.