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NBA FINALS: CAVALIERS v WARRIORSJune 9, 2015David BlattCLEVELAND, OHIO: Game Three Cavaliers – 96 Q. Coach, you guys never trailed tonight. You had another very good defensive effort. Can you speak just the fight in your team and just the confidence they played with tonight? COACH BLATT: It's just a group that is willing to play as hard as they can to win. And when you do that, you can live with any consequence. We may bend sometimes, but we haven't broken. We don't break. Lot of character in that room, and they're bringing it to the floor. Q. First of all, congratulations. 7 million people in Israel are happy tonight with you for the second time in a row. How do you see it going from here forward? Can it really become the biggest ever season of the Cavaliers? COACH BLATT: Long way to go before we start even talking about that. We just finished Game 3. Right now we're up 2‑1 in the series, and everything's still very much wide open. We've worked very hard to get to this point, and we're going to keep working hard. I thought we did some very good things tonight. I thought there were a lot of things that we could have done better. We need to look at it, and we need to improve on it. All we have on our minds right now is Game 4. Q. LeBron missed 20 shots tonight, but when you look at the box score, it might not tell the whole story. It looks like he's able to slow down the clock, eat some of the clock, and not let the Warriors get the shot and crash the boards. Are you willing to live with those missed shots, as long as you slow the pace down and crash those boards? COACH BLATT: Absolutely. He's playing and we're playing the way we want to play. And what you just said to me amazes me. I didn't even‑‑ I didn't see it. I didn't feel it because I thought he played a terrific game. I didn't see him take a lot of bad shots at all. I thought he was great. I thought he controlled the game and helped his team to play the way that we wanted to play. And I'll take it every day. Q. Do you see Matthew Dellavedova's confidence rising with every game that he plays, performing under this kind of pressure? COACH BLATT: He's had games like this. You may be surprised because you don't follow us all season. But he's had some games like this. I don't even know that it's a matter of confidence with Matt. I just think he plays as hard as he can every day. He plays right. He's not afraid. He plays courageously. And everybody on this team has his back, so it's not an issue of confidence. He's going to give you whatever he has, and you can't ask for anything more than that. Q. There were times in the fourth when Dellavedova was not on staff. Was that the result of cross‑matches or did you guys take him off? COACH BLATT: No, there were some cross‑matches, and we also tried to change coverages a little bit. Obviously Steph had a great fourth quarter, and so did the Warriors. That is the reason they came back, because we had controlled the game pretty well up to that point. I said before the game, that is a potent offensive team, and he's a potent offensive player, and you saw it in the third quarter. I thought we could have functioned better on offense, and that might have helped our defense. You know, it sort of works both ways. But if we'd have functioned better on offense, I believe we wouldn't have seen the 36‑point quarter on their part, even with Steph's great play. Cross‑matches are going to happen during the game, just with guys moving around and switching and things like that. But whoever's got him has got to get up in him. That's the only way to do it. But he made some tough shots. Q. Coach, tremendous defensive effort for three quarters, only 55 points fielded. 36‑point fourth quarter. There have been some not so big leads as that, but some other leads given away late in the game. How can that be fixed, that fourth quarter? Maybe complacency, letdown, whatever you would call it? COACH BLATT: I don't think complacent would be the proper word choice. I don't think our guys gave in, and I don't think that they let up. I thought that Golden State made some plays, made some shots, which they are capable of doing. Again, I thought that we let down a little bit on the offensive end, which put us in a back‑up kind of mode. You know, we weren't as aggressive as we were early. But complacency, no. Our guys wanted to win that game every second of the game, and Golden State's a pretty good team, if anyone's forgotten. They won 68 games this year, and they made the NBA Finals. So they're going to have a quarter like that. Let's just hope it's not two. Q. Dellavedova, besides what he did tonight on the floor, what impact does he have on his teammates and on your crowd? COACH BLATT: They seem to like him, don't they? Delle's the most Cleveland‑like Australian I've ever met in my life. And if you're from Cleveland, you know just what I'm talking about. The guys love Delle because he just plays with all his heart and he cares first about the team and only about the team. Whether he's playing 9 minutes or 40 minutes, he's going to give you everything you have. What's not to love about the guy? I tell you what, his biggest fan is sitting home right now, Kyrie Irving. Loves the guy. And he knows why, and we know why. We miss that guy, by the way, a lot. And the other guy sitting out, too, Kevin Love, we miss him too. Need I say Andy as well. We've got a lot of guys sitting out right now. Q. Iman obviously went out. When he came back, it still looked like he was favoring his left shoulder. Whatever you can tell us about his injury, I'd like to hear it, and then also just how tough he was to grit through that? COACH BLATT: First of all, very tough. Very, very, very tough. I don't know a lot of guys that come back in the game. And I don't know to tell you exactly what is the situation with his shoulder. He'll be examined right now. Exactly what they'll do in terms of the examination, better ask the doctors. But he was in some pain and he was hurting. Not a lot of guys come back out of the locker room and play the way he did, and my hat is off to him. Q. Tell us how significant this win for you is, having your entire family for the first time, your wife, all of your kids, here in the Quicken Loans Arena. COACH BLATT: Boy, you guys really want that personal note all the time, you know. I'm from Israel, and we're very familial‑type people, so it's great to have my family here. And it's great to have my family of Cleveland here, because our fans are amazing. They really are. Q. Earlier in the playoffs LeBron said he kind of had to be cajoled by Kyrie Irving to take on a bigger offensive role, and obviously guys have gone out since then. But have you guys had to urge him to take on this offense through the first three games of The Finals? COACH BLATT: No. He understands the moment. He understands the situation, and he is a big, big, big‑time player. He can get it done. Q. When they were making that run at the end there, what were some of the things perhaps in the huddle that you or somebody else were saying at those final few frenzied minutes? COACH BLATT: Well, that we could expect that they were going to make a run. We had to sort of get our house in order again offensively, stop the bleeding if we could, and prepare ourselves for the same type of intense effort at the other end that we needed to make. Again, I didn't see us quitting on plays and I didn't see us letting down. But energy seemed to drop, and that was a big part of it. It just seemed to drop. Again, a lot of times that's what happens when you take it out of the net and you're not scoring it. But, man, this is a resilient group. They just don't give in. If you can bend and not break, you've always got a chance. You've got a chance. FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports |
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