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NBA EASTERN CONFERENCE FINALS: RAPTORS v CAVALIERSMay 18, 2016Dwane CaseyCleveland, Ohio: Practice Day Q. Got it all figured out? DWANE CASEY: Well, no, again, each game is different. They spanked us last night, which everyone saw, but there are a lot of things we can do better, we will do better. I think they were clicking on all cylinders after the first quarter, and then we didn't respond in the right way. But there are some things we can do that we can correct and will. Q. Guys have used words like effort and hustle. Is that the product of -- DWANE CASEY: I don't know if effort and hustle, because I wouldn't say our guys weren't -- I think the focus and attention to detail, understanding exactly where you should be, who should be going and all those things were more the problem than effort and hustle. If you've got to talk about effort and hustle at this time of year, like I've always said, we're in the wrong business. I don't think it was lack of effort. Q. You guys have had a tendency to take four or five minutes off in every game. Against this team it's doubly deadly. DWANE CASEY: It is. You relax for a couple minutes in this game, and it's death. Q. Did you do that last night? DWANE CASEY: No, I thought we had droughts. I don't know if we took possessions off, but we had droughts where we couldn't score. Offense led to their fast breaks, getting out in transition. I thought that was an issue more than anything else. But again, it starts with taking care of the basketball where they can't get into their running game, and that got them going, I think, toward the end of the first quarter and into the second quarter. Q. Talk about the bench. You've taken two guys already off your bench and put them into the starting five. What do you do -- DWANE CASEY: That's the issue. We're now starting two of our good bench guys that led that brigade with the second unit, but there's some things we can do with the rotation, who we can bring in, who we bring back in, and do a better job of making sure we have the right guys in, combinations. The issues are who do we have to guard certain players for their team, so there are a lot of variables we have to work with as far as the groups we have on the court are concerned, and then there are variables that hurt us offensively. We may be good defensively, but it hurts us on the offensive end. So we've got to figure that out before tomorrow night. Q. It looked like you guys were trying to guard LeBron [James] straight up, to start anyway. What kind of risks are there in doing that? DWANE CASEY: There are a lot of risks. How many points did he score in the paint? That's the risk. He's such a great one-on-one player that you have to pick your poison with those guys. You know, you cut down on the threes, but we opened up another can of worms. There are things we're going to have to do to curb that issue with the one-on-ones and the straight-line drives. Some of the straight-line drives, it's just like in the summertime, you're guarding a guy one-on-one, you've got to get down in the stance and understand that your cushion that you can have on the guy, if you get too close, he's going to blow by you. If you're off too far, he's going to pull up. That's another attention to detail defensively that we've got to have. Q. Offensively they took you out of what you normally do. Did you find that frustrating? DWANE CASEY: Well, they were into us, and they were doing some things defensively that -- the key is making the next play. You've got to give a team credit. They were prepared for some of the things off the first option. Now we've got to make the second pass out of that play, maybe even the third pass out of that play to make sure we punish them for what they're trying to do. Q. You guys missed 19 threes, I think 5-of-24. What percent of those were looks you're happy with? DWANE CASEY: Well, we've got to get better at that, and some of them are shots that we've made before, and some of them were tough shots. You've got to give Cleveland credit. They were there on some of the shots, and some of them were just shots we missed that we've made before. We've got to make sure we get good looks, good looks at the three. Again, we can't turn them down. Our three-point shooters can't turn shots down out of rhythm just because they missed a couple, and again, you've got to keep confidence in your shot and confidence in what we're trying to do. Q. Kyle [Lowry] and DeMar [DeRozan] are not getting to the free-throw line. How much of that was on them, what they did defensively -- DWANE CASEY: That's a phenomenal number. That number, 298 games they've played together, and this is the first time in the 298 games that they did not get to the free-throw line. I'm not very good at math, but it's almost mathematically impossible as much as we drive and kick, so we've got to continue to do that. We've got to continue to go in and create contact. But out of 298 games, that's the first time our two All-Stars haven't gotten to the free-throw line. But we've got to continue to go in and continue to attack the paint, attack through the reach-in. They're a great team at reaching and trying to go for the rip. We've got to play through that, through that contact, and again, put the onus on the officials to make the correct call. Q. Do you make calls to the league and ask for explanations -- DWANE CASEY: We go through the protocol. We send the plays in and we send the protocol in, and that's all we can do. Q. Have they given you an explanation? DWANE CASEY: I haven't seen it yet. We just sent it in today. Q. You could run a team off the line and still not give up layups if you have somebody there to meet them at the five-foot mark or whatever. The lack of that help, was it mistakes or was it that they spread you out so much that it's difficult to -- DWANE CASEY: More the second. More the second. They did some things to spread us out that we were correct to try to take away, our rim protection away. The issue is Channing Frye. He's not in the normal rotation spot. He's spaced out at the three. So again, we saw that. We made some adjustments on that to make sure we still have help there at the rim to take away that, because again, we've got to take away the first beast, which is their three-point shooting. We did that, but now we've got to make adjustments to make sure we have bodies on the drives. Q. How much zone have you played this year? DWANE CASEY: Not a lot. Why do you ask? Q. Is it in your back pocket? DWANE CASEY: Always. Always. Q. Talk about the physicality in the second and third quarters. DWANE CASEY: Physicality is basketball. That has nothing to do with it. The only issue is it's a physical game and our two guys only get to the free-throw line zero times, out of 298 games. So it was a very physical game, so that's the -- physicality doesn't bother us. We like that. We've gotten adjusted to it. We've had two physical series with Indiana and Miami, two very good, physical defensive teams, a lot like them, so that shouldn't affect us whatsoever. Q. Do you need to play these guys physically? DWANE CASEY: We play everybody physically. There's nobody in this league in the playoffs you shouldn't play physically. I mean, physically they're getting into the ball, boxing out, making sure you tag cutters and things like that. That's physical. Not hurting somebody or knocking somebody. You don't have to do that. You have to be physical to dictate direction, to make sure nobody is getting a free cut through the lane. All legal, clean, physical play is what we have to do. We have to do that in every series. Q. You talked about protecting the paint now. How much of it comes down to on the ball being able to at least not give up straight-line drives? DWANE CASEY: That's exactly it. When it's one-on-one, you've got to understand who I'm guarding, how fast he is, how close I can get, because I don't care how many shot blockers you have, they can't get there quick enough if it's one dribble to the rim, and that was our issue yesterday. So we've got to do a better job of gauging speed, gauging distance, gauging our cushion, how close I can get to make sure we can guard them down low. But again, they have some great one-on-one players. But we're better than what we showed last night. FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports   |
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