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NBA PLAYOFFS ROUND TWO: TRAIL BLAZERS vs WARRIORS

May 3, 2016

Steve Kerr

Oakland, California: Game Two

Warriors - 110, Trail Blazers - 99

Q. I know you always tell your guys to stay ready, but what can you say about the impact Fez has had?
STEVE KERR: He changed the whole game with his pick-and-roll defense and his presence around the rim. The energy he gave us. He played 13 straight minutes. This is a guy who has been out most of the last part of the season and didn't play much in the Houston series. So phenomenal effort from Fez to really change the game.

Q. Steve, would you say the way the defense changed in the fourth was that due to intensity or just matter of execution?
STEVE KERR: I think it was intensity, but I thought, again, Festus, just because he was so active and mobile against all their actions that they run, he just made things tougher on their guards. They're so explosive and they run really good stuff, I mean, it's hard to guard. You have to cover a lot of floor against Portland, and I thought between Festus and Draymond, those guys did a great job of protecting the feed and moving and handling the pick-and-roll on top.

Everybody deserves credit, not just those two guys. Andre kept us in the game in the first half I thought when things weren't going well, and Klay stayed with it. He had a rough start to the game, but really came up huge, and same with Shaun. I think Shaun was 1 for 7 at halftime, and made probably the biggest shot on of the game on that fadeaway with two minutes left to move it from 5 to 7. I could keep going, but we turned around what was a pretty bad game for us, and we had enough time to get back.

Q. How would you explain the slow start, if you can?
STEVE KERR: Game 2s always scare me, especially if you won the first one relatively easily like we did. It just happens. It's human nature. The other team comes out angry, maybe you let your guard down a little bit, even though you're aware of the circumstances.

Portland was phenomenal in the first half. They played incredibly well and made every shot. They were moving the ball. I thought out working us defensively, getting into us and running us off of our cuts and our flow. So that's mostly what Portland did, but we hung in there.

Q. We've seen in these last few games since Steph went out Andre seems to be attacking the basket more. Has that been a particular emphasis for him with Steph out?
STEVE KERR: I don't ever have to say anything to Andre. He's one of the smartest basketball players I've ever been around. So whatever needs to be done, he figures it out and he does it. He knew we needed him to score tonight, so he picked it up. Didn't score much in the first game, but this game he knew we needed it, so he was attacking and being much more aggressive.

Q. How important was Andre in the first half to keeping the game close?
STEVE KERR: Well, he does everything for us. He's basically our back-up point guard right now with Steph out, but he's also guarding McCollum and Lillard at times, and he's rebounding for us, four assists, no turnovers. He was great at both ends. Yeah, I mean, he was the guy who kind of kept our head above water in the first half.

Q. Coach, can you talk about Draymond Green's leadership capabilities and how vocal he is and how that shapes the identity of what you guys do? Also, follow-up to that, if you had to describe his personality, how would you do that?
STEVE KERR: Draymond is extremely passionate and he never takes a game off, regular season, playoffs, doesn't matter. He's very, very competitive, very vocal. We're a pretty quiet team otherwise, so he's the guy who kind of keeps the engine going.

Q. What was the difference between Game 1 and 2 and the types of shots that C.J. McCollum and Lillard were able to get? Was there a big difference?
STEVE KERR: I think they were just -- they outworked us early. I think Game 1 for them may have been such a quick turnaround and they weren't on top of their game. They just seemed much quicker, much more active tonight right from the tip which is exactly what we expected.

So I'm not sure. I'll have to watch the tape and see if the shots were that much different. But generally speaking, when you play as hard as they did right from the beginning and you're cutting and moving the ball like they did, shots tend to go in. So they executed better tonight I thought.

Q. How different is it to go on a comeback without Steph compared to when you have?
STEVE KERR: Yeah, it's different. The thing we have to rely on is our defense. Anytime you're down and you're trying to make comeback, it has to start defensively. You have to make stops. But you know, we're not getting those long range threes from Steph in transition when he's not out, so we have to generate points elsewhere.

I thought in our run in the fourth quarter we had a lot of guys step up and make big shots and big plays. But it was our defense that fueled everything.

Q. I wanted to get back a little bit to how Klay Thompson turned it around in this game. In the first half he was defended really well with bigger guys. Third quarter he took maybe -- got a technical and then had some ill-advised shots. It looked like you were particularly unhappy with one of them right before the time out. What do you think happened during that timeout, or is it just something that Klay did on his own to get himself turned around?
STEVE KERR: I thought we lost our poise there a little bit late in the third quarter. I was upset. I called a quick timeout because we didn't run the play right that we had drawn up. We didn't finish the quarter well. We could have taken the last shot. Instead we take a quick shot and Lillard hits the three.

So we did not close the third quarter well, but Klay just got it going in the fourth. He was able to pound Lillard and still have enough energy to make big shots at the other end.

Q. To follow up on Lillard, he hit 17 in the third and zero in the fourth. Was it an adjustment you made defensively or how were you able to shut him down?
STEVE KERR: Festus had a big role in that because of his activity, and I thought Klay did an excellent job chasing him. Damian is so tough to handle on those high screens. He's so quick, strong, he can get to the rim. So he probably missed a couple that he had made earlier. But I thought Festus's presence at least made things a little tougher for him.

Q. How did you see Festus respond to struggling in Houston? How did you see him respond to not playing the other day? Did it take Anderson and Mo struggling to have him play?
STEVE KERR: Well, I always just kind of get a feel -- as a staff, we get a feel for what's needed. We kind of play all three of those guys off the bench. We'll play Draymond at center, so we have a lot of different options and we just try to figure out what's necessary and we were getting killed defensively and giving up a lot of easy shots.

Festus is obviously very athletic and takes up a lot of space, so that was the idea was just to see if he could make an impact, and he did. He stayed ready, and I'm really proud of him because he hasn't played much lately. In the Houston series he didn't get much of a flow going when he was out there. So this was a good response from him, very professional response to not playing much before this.

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