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Illness, injuries and a suspension left the Florida Flame more of a flicker on Sunday. Still, the NBDL team almost pulled out a victory.

Playing without its coach and two of its top players, Florida whittled a 24-point third-quarter deficit to three with 4:18 to go, but couldn't complete the comeback, falling to first-place Fort Worth, 92-82, before 2,281 fans, as well as SpongeBob SquarePants and Patrick at Germain Arena. "Anytime that you have guys that are playing different roles because of injuries or illnesses, it's a little bit difficult to make that adjustment on the fly," said assistant coach/director of basketball operations Terry Thimlar, who coached the team in place of Jeff Malone.

"You've got to play through it and not get frustrated. I thought the guys at the end, when I challenged them with not much time left in the game, they made a game of it. They came down and they got defensive stops and they attacked the basket and we got easy baskets in transition."

Malone missed his second straight game with an upper respiratory illness, point guard Andre Barrett was home with the flu, and leading scorer Bracey Wright missed his second straight game with a stress fracture in his left foot.

Wright, the former Indiana star who is allocated by the NBA's Minnesota Timberwolves, said he will meet today with a doctor to go over a magnetic resonance imaging exam he had on Friday.

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