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NBA WESTERN CONFERENCE FINALS: ROCKETS v WARRIORSMay 19, 2015Kevin McHaleOAKLAND, CALIFORNIA: Game One Q. Coach, I'm interested in the Andrew Bogut‑Dwight Howard match‑up. What does Dwight have to do to be successful in this series against Andrew Bogut and the Warriors' defense? KEVIN McHALE: Same thing he usually does. I don't think Dwight is going to change his game much. He's in his 10th or 11th year. He's got to go out and play. Played great against DeAndre Jordan, defensive‑minded center from the Clippers. He's got to rebound, run the floor, anchor our defense, got to go inside them at times, and he's going to have to deliver for us on the post, and he's going to‑‑ I mean, you don't like all of a sudden be Kareem one series and then have him be Moses the next series. He's going to be Dwight Howard. All right. (Laughter). Q. Question for you: Fresh start for both teams. Do you see either team having an advantage entering Game 1? KEVIN McHALE: Hey, look, if they won 67 games, sure, they have home‑court advantage. We've got to come in here and we've got to win the game. It's the same as‑‑ fortunately we had home court in the first two games where it was‑‑ one of our goals was to come out and win the first two home games. Our goal now, we've got to win a game in Golden State. I'm not sure anybody has momentum. You can say, well, we had an elimination. We had three elimination games. We're coming in, and hey, the team that executes the best tonight is going to win. It's not the team that's going to say I've got momentum from a week ago or I've got momentum from Sunday. It's the team that's going to defend the best, that's going to make the best plays, turn it over the least, rebound the ball. We know what we have to do. There's a‑‑ every team has a blueprint for how they play well, and we've just got to do what we do well, and if we do that really well, we'll give ourselves a hell of a chance of winning the game, and that's what you do. Q. What's some of the things you like about Josh Smith in this series? KEVIN McHALE: I look over here because that's what comes out of that mic right here and I keep on thinking the guy is standing there. Josh is going to have to play basketball again and he's going to have to go out there and do what he does for us, make plays for us, drive downhill, rebound the ball, block some shots at the rim. Josh just gives us another very versatile player on our team, and we run the ball through him quite a bit. You know, going to have to make Draymond Green defend. He's a good defender, but we're going to have to make him defend on the floor, in the post, around. Those guys, again, he's just got to go out and do his job, do what he does well for us. Q. The four teams remaining in the Playoffs all shoot the three‑point shot at the highest rate left in the Playoffs. How much do you think that's sort of dispelled the notion that three‑point shooting teams can't win the title? KEVIN McHALE: Well, I mean, for us we try to‑‑ we try to start our game off by trying to go inside. I mean, I want to lead the league in paint points. I think that's really important. How you get those threes is you either run, fill in behind, but your big man runs down, takes a guard with him, the guard steps into a slot three. You drive inside, they collapse, you kick it out. You throw it inside to the big fella, he goes to work, they double‑team, you kick it out. I think the more you get paint, the more threes you get, just because you collapse the defense. So I don't think they're mutually exclusive. If you're saying to me, it doesn't make any sense to shoot a 19‑and‑a‑half footer when I can take a step back, I mean, this much is not‑‑ your range is not this much. You step back that much and you get three for it, so we practice getting behind the three‑point line when we drive in, we shoot them. But I think when we go bad is when we shoot too many of them and don't get in the paint enough. We've got to attack. Our guys and our system is set up to try to get in the paint and try to attack them and get to the foul line. I don't know where we are in foul shots in the postseason. I haven't looked at all those numbers. But we try to get to the line as much as possible. The two better shots than the three are a dunk and a free throw. Q. Steve was saying when he talked to you before taking the job and you were kind of helping out giving advice that one of the things you discussed was the highs and lows of the job and maybe you can't really experience that until you're an NBA head coach. Is that the case? To really get a feel and appreciate how tough this job can be, there's no other way to do it than to do it? KEVIN McHALE: Yeah, but it's the same thing as saying as a player you can't experience the highs and lows unless you play. You've got to be in the fight to kind of experience the whole feel of it. You know, and yeah, we talked about it. I think Steve had enough of doing TV games where you don't care who wins. At first it was nice not to care who wins, just because you're like, man, I'm just so glad I don't care who wins. After a while, you're like, dang, I want to care more. I think that's part of being on a team since you were a 12‑ or 13‑year‑old kid and experiencing all that. It's just part of you and it's part of the game that's really the most enjoyable, and being around the guys, and Stevie is younger than I am, but it keeps you young. Q. You always say that nothing outside of the court really matters outside of the game, but you guys are decided underdogs here. Will you play on that or try to tell the players not to focus on that even though it's thrown in their face all over the place? KEVIN McHALE: I think we were an underdog in LA, too, weren't we? I think a lot of people had picked them to win the series.  You know what, let me tell you something, I was 17 or 18 years old and everybody told me I couldn't play in the Big Ten. I can't tell you how much I could care less what anybody else says about anything. I don't listen to it, I honestly don't. Hey, we've got to go out and play basketball. Whether they think you can win or whether they think you can't win, I told our guys, it's how we have to go play. I haven't listened to that stuff for a long, long, long, long, long time. The team that plays the best on the floor is going to win. Now, we have to do what we have to do. You can't go out there and just say, oh, we're favored, we're going to win, or we're the underdogs, doggone it, I wish we had a chance. I mean, you guys go out there and play basketball. Honestly, I don't think players look at‑‑ I don't look at it. Honestly, I just think they're thinking what's my assignment, what do I got to do, how do I got to play today, how can I help my team win, what type of focus do I need, and really the rest of the stuff, I honestly don't think that‑‑ as a player I never thought about it. As a coach I really don't think about it, either. When I talk to the guys and we talk about playing and what it takes, it's much more‑‑ it's not what other people think, it's much more what's it going to take for you to win this series, how hard are we going to have to play, who are we going to have to knock on their rear end, how much are we going to have to just try to punch them in the mouth on this play and attack and go downhill, and how much fight are we going to have to try to win this series. I don't know what it has to do with underdog, you know. FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports |
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