|
|||
|
|||
|
 |
|
|
NBA EASTERN CONFERENCE FINALS: RAPTORS v CAVALIERSMay 20, 2016Dwane CaseyToronto, Ontario: Practice Day Q. What should be the approach at this time of year? Every guy has been playing every other day for the last three weeks. I can't imagine the mental and physical fatigue. Has it changed your approach at all to what you have to do? DWANE CASEY: Well, no, it doesn't. We've had the same routine as far as what we try to accomplish on the court, in the film room. Individually, it's probably more individual work now, film work, on the court work, kind of going half speed of what we want to go through. Just physically you can't go full speed practice wise. But got probably a pretty good rhythm on how we want to go. Again, give hats off to Cleveland. They earned the right to have time off between series, and we made it harder on ourselves and had to struggle through two seven-game series. But that still said, we're in the Eastern Conference Finals. There's no excuses right now for us, the staff or anyone as far as saying, hey, we're tired or whatever. This is what you play for all summer. This is what you work for is to get to this. There's only four teams left, and we're one of the four. It's a privilege; it's not a punishment to have to play every other day. We're excited about it, and we've got to go out and play like it. Q. Listening to your postgame last night, it's like the series is over -- DWANE CASEY: Well, exactly. That's the thing that bothered me more than anything else. Some folks were asking questions for me to brag on LeBron James. I've given him every superlative you can out of respect. I did the same thing with Michael Jordan, Kobe Bryant, all those guys. So you've got to do that. But yet and still, it's not over. It's a seven-game series. I believe in our team. We lost games uncharacteristically bad the first two games. That was embarrassing the way we lost the first game and the second game. But that said, it's two games. We have an opportunity tomorrow night to come out and play with pride, together, and play in a positive atmosphere for us. Again, this is an opportunity. We're in the Eastern Conference Finals. There's a lot of teams that want to be here, and now we've got to go out and play like it with pride and togetherness and belief that we can beat this team. Q. Do you think there's -- both Kyle and DeMar have both said that they don't listen, they don't hear a lot, but I'm sure people may tell them. All the talk about LeBron, now the talk about having no chance in the series, now the stuff about Kyle last night, that he walked out on his team and it's all over ESPN now that Kyle Lowry left his team and everything. Do you think it's getting to the guys? DWANE CASEY: No, I get it because I have to face it three times a day to answer those questions from -- but again, Kyle did not walk out on his team. He and Cory Joseph use the bathroom more than any two human beings I know during the game, and I know the nervousness is there and guys do it before the game. Kyle, I took him out -- if I remember correctly, it was his time to come out or he had foul trouble, one of the two. I didn't even notice him going to the back, but he does it all the time. He'll go back in, use the bathroom, come back out. They happened to catch it on camera, talking to those guys after the game, ESPN. But he did not quit on his team. He hasn't quit on his team. He had a tough night last night, yes, but he didn't quit on his team. Again, he's got to -- I guess they have to find a better way -- he has to find a better way because it looks like he was frustrated or whatever, but I don't think he quit on his team. That's the wrong word to use for Kyle Lowry or any of our guys. Q. James Johnson, what's your assessment the two games that you've used him in this series? DWANE CASEY: James Johnson? I've thought he's played solid this week. His strength, his body has -- he has a better opportunity to keep James, LeBron James, out of the paint the way he plays. He presents a problem on the other end because I think he can attack the rim more. I think our James, James Johnson, can attack the rim more. He's done what we wanted him to do. Q. When you're down 0-2, do you try to tighten your rotation or just try to do what you -- DWANE CASEY: We have a set group that we want to play with as far as our rotation is concerned. Trying to find the right match-ups. What we've got to do, I've got to do a better job of is finding the group to play with Channing Frye at the 5 and LeBron James at the 4. I have not done a good job of matching that group. Trying to find the right person to match that group has been my issue. We've got to do a better job with that, of matching up with that, because I think they've out-scored us plus 22. I don't know that number exactly, other than 22 minutes, so it's not good. So we've got to do a better job of matching that smaller group, that shooting group that they bring into the game in the second quarter. Q. You touched on a tough night for Kyle. As much as you would say you want all the guys on your team to be playing well because it starts with him so often, how important is it to get him back on track starting tomorrow? DWANE CASEY: Well, it's always important to have your top player, but again, we've been here before. You know, there's nights he hasn't played well. There's other things Kyle can do, he knows he can do. If DeMar is not shooting the ball well, there's things he can do. One is defend the position. Loose balls, get on the floor, take charges. Just so many other things you can do other than scoring. What we can't do is put so much premium on scoring that we force shots and take some tough shots instead of moving the basketball and finding the open man. This is a different series than the Miami and Indiana series. We had trouble catching the ball. This series is more about speed and quickness. They plan -- LeBron James's gap is not gapping but roaming, and we're trying to figure out where he is. If we make one or two passes out of that, then we can burn him on the weak side. We've got to be patient and cognizant of what they're trying to do to us, and we're trying to do that, and we haven't done a good job of making sure when he's roaming around, make that extra pass and maybe one more pass, that it's wide open, and at the end of the day, we've got to make our shots. Q. Any idea if Jonas [Valanciunas] is going to be returning to the court for you guys tomorrow night? DWANE CASEY: Not sure. But I would say tomorrow night is doubtful. It's wishful thinking, but I don't foresee him tomorrow night. After that we'll just have to wait and see. Q. Is he progressing at all? DWANE CASEY: His progression is coming. He's on the court. Alex McKechnie and the staff is doing an excellent job of getting him back up to speed and working with it and getting the flexibility in the ankle. You know, it's coming along. But we're not going to rush it back just to -- is it something that you could do further damage to it if you rush back too quick. Q. Does he want to play? Does he come up to you -- DWANE CASEY: He wants to play, but we've got to be smart. He wants to play, but we've got to be smart with that. Q. DeMar was noting that he felt like you guys actually did get a lot of good open shots last night, perhaps more than you've been getting in the past series. Can you put your finger on why the shooting is just not coming through for you guys? DWANE CASEY: Yeah, it's tough to say. I don't know what it is. Guys just have to step up and make shots. Our offense is built around our shooters. They know the shots we want to take. And again, can we get a better shot, can we move the ball one more pass, two more passes to get even a better look or a better rhythm look to the weak side. I think that's the key thing, and some of the shots that we're taking are open, but can someone else get a better shot. That's the issue we're facing, the patience we've got to have. It may be T-Ross on the weak side. DeMar has two in front of him, swing it, even more of an open look, because they're doing a good job of scrambling. There's no method -- I'm sure they have a method to their madness, but a lot of it is scrambling. LeBron is here, he's there. Shumpert is here, he's there. They're doing a lot of roaming in those situations, so if we can burn them and make the extra pass, that will help us. Q. Terrence's fouls, were they careless do you think? DWANE CASEY: Well, we did a bad job second quarter of marching them -- it was 46-46, and we gave them about eight points on careless fouls, on cheap fouls, half court, under the basket, just cheap fouls. They were already in the penalty, marching to the free throw line, and we did not close the quarter out. We've got to do a better job of mentally closing the quarter out and not making mental mistakes and shooting ourselves in the foot. Those fouls are careless. They're not smart fouls. If you're going to foul somebody, make sure you get somebody going to the rim, a good, hard playoff foul. We'll take those kind of fouls. But to get somebody at half court or reach and grab somebody out on the perimeter when you have no -- there's no reason to do that and put them on the free throw line and give them points away. Those are things we've got to do a better job of, too, is closing out quarters. That really hurt us. I think it was 46-46, and we just didn't do a good job of closing that out. Q. Because it looked like Terrence could have been the third sort of scoring option -- DWANE CASEY: Yeah, no question, and we need that. We need that third guy to step up, fourth guy to step up to make shots, and Terrence was making shots last night. We need him in there because he is an excellent shot creator for us. He does a good job. And again, even though he got those quick fouls, some of them he could take out of his repertoire about being smart, not reaching, and the cheap fouls is the one we want to do away with. Q. We asked the players about how they're doing physically and mentally at this point, game after game after game. What about yourself? Obviously this is tiring. DWANE CASEY: Well, this is it. I've been through it. I've been through a championship run. I understand the length of it. We put ourselves in this position where we have to play every other day. We didn't close the games out we should have, and so now we're paying for it. But with that said, we're excited to be here. This is an accomplishment for our program. Now we've got to go out and play with pride and play with the toughness that we've established all year, rest and all that stuff, every other day, guys would probably be in the gym every day anyway playing, even if we weren't in the Playoffs. We can't pay any attention to that because this is what you play for. This is why you work all summer and you work during the regular season to win 56 games to get to this point, to be in the final four. But again, we can't just be satisfied to be here. My goal for this organization, franchise, is to win a championship. Whether it's this year, next year, whatever, but this is what you've got to go through to get there. We went through the hard part last year, the year before that, to get here, to build, now let's just don't be satisfied. Let's go out and play with pride and belief that we belong here. Q. The crowd tomorrow, do you think it could energize the players? DWANE CASEY: Yeah, I think so. I think being at home will help us. It should. You know, again, the crowd can't help us. We've got to help ourselves. We've got to go out and do the job ourselves to compete and play to win. Q. You've touched on this throughout the season, the ability that this team had to not allow long losing streaks. You haven't lost three in a row since mid-November. How, why, and even into the postseason, how have you been able to do that? DWANE CASEY: Well, I think the mental toughness of the group. That's why us -- again, I'm not saying we're not competing. We had stretches where we don't compete, which shoots us in the foot. Like last night, they beat us by two in the first quarter, three in the third quarter, and two in the fourth quarter, but they get us by eight, and 12 in the second quarter. So the stretch in the second quarter, we've got to cut down on those stretches where we don't get it done. Q. It's only a four-minute stretch. DWANE CASEY: It was a four-minute stretch, right. So those are the stretches we've got to be mentally ready for and understand how to get through those and compete in those stretches, all right, mentally, because like you said, over the season we've been a resilient team. We are a resilient team. Those guys over there, for all that's been said and done, have been fighters, scrappers, and that's been the reason why. Why stop now? Let's get that fight in our pants and compete. But again, those stretches, it's not the entire game that really breaks our back. I think we had cut it to eight and had two opportunities to cut it below 10. It was in the third quarter, five minutes to go or six minutes to go in the third quarter. So you put yourself in a position, and then they go on another little run. So we've got to make sure we cut those lulls down on both ends of the floor, not just offensively, and when we miss a shot, we can't go down and say, okay, oh, I missed a shot, now our energy level goes down on the defensive end, our focus and our fundamentals go down on the defensive end because we've missed shots or had a tough play on the offensive end. We've got to make sure we balance that out. Q. This has been a really good defensive team for most of the season, but you're asking for more now, right, against this team. Is there less room for error? DWANE CASEY: The further you go in the Playoffs, there's always less room. Every possession is important. Every play is important. Every shot selection, every defensive possession, assignment. In those stretches that I was talking about, there's so many times there's small fundamentals that we don't do that we've done a good job with all year defensively that for whatever reason, and we forget to do, whether it's a high tag to close out, or a sandwich box-out, things fundamentally that we've done all year. And the hard thing now is someone asked, we can't do it in practice now because you don't have the physical energy and time to do it. But you know, those are the things we've got to do in those situations and not get caught up in the game or the ebbs and flows of the game or the missed shots or whatever is going on and not get it done on the defensive end. Q. Is part of also not getting caught up, if LeBron or Kyrie does something spectacular, makes a tough shot, that you kind of accept that and move on? DWANE CASEY: No question, and some of those shots that Irving is making that are tough shots where their core is right in his grille, and he's making tough shots. But again, like you said, there's another little extra step we've got to do to make him miss, and there's some other schemes we can try to do, but schemes, this year, we've changed a lot of them almost every game throughout the two series, but at the end of the day, it comes down to making sure we do whatever we have to do individually and fundamentally in those situations to get it done and raise it, like you said, to another level. Q. Biyombo seems to feed off the crowd. Do you think he's one of the guys who benefit the most from being at home? DWANE CASEY: Well, we'll see. He's played well -- all of our guys have played well at home. You know, again, this is a different day. We've got to -- now we've got to crank it up and do it again. We've got to do it. We can't talk about it. We've got to go out and do it. Bis [Bismack], he does get juiced up on the crowd, and I think all of our guys play much better at home, but again, we still have to go out and do it. Q. Away from tactics or lineup changes, is there anything you might consider doing to change the day-to-day routine, the game-day routine to change things up for your guys and change the mindset a little? DWANE CASEY: Well, I don't know if that has -- again, we need as much court time to go through some of the fundamentals, at least just walk through where we are as much as we can, because you don't have -- time is at a premium as far as practice and having the team together between games. That's very difficult to do when you have one game. If we had two days between or maybe three days like the Western Conference does, then okay, we may take a day off or do something different or go on a hike or whatever it is. But I think time is of -- is very limited as far as getting things done and getting things cleared up, all the things that we talked about. FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports   |
|
||||||||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
About ASAP Sports •
FastScripts Archive •
Recent Interviews •
Captioning •
Upcoming Events •
Contact Us
FastScripts | Events Covered | Our Clients | Other Services | ASAP in the News | Site Map | Job Opportunities | Links |
|
ASAP Sports, Inc. | T: 1.212 385 0297
|