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NBA FINALS: CAVALIERS v WARRIORSJune 5, 2016Draymond GreenKlay ThompsonOakland, California: Game Two Warriors 110, Cavaliers 77 Q. Draymond, so you guys are down 6 early to mid-second quarter. Suddenly you erupt with a 20-2 run. What the heck happened? DRAYMOND GREEN: We really stayed poised. We were up for a minute, and then they went on that run and started the second quarter, and everybody kept their poise. We continued to trust the offense, and we started to lock back down on the defensive end. Once we did that, we were able to get a couple of run-outs, our guys hit a couple of threes and we just continued to move the basketball and continued to move bodies. Q. What did that feel like out there? The crowd's going nuts. You've got a double-digit lead and you just built from there. DRAYMOND GREEN: It's a great feeling. Obviously, to have our crowd involved, and we're on a run. We feed off their energy. So when they get loud and all of a sudden you hit a shot, it makes the defensive end a little easier. The defensive end gets a little easier, obviously offense becomes a little easier. So just to have a crowd involved is a great feeling, and, like I said, it's something feed off of. Q. What's that feel like for you when you're finding yourself open at the three-point line repeatedly? DRAYMOND GREEN: I mean, it's just a matter of whether I'm going to knock the shot or make or miss the shot. It's a rhythm shot. Klay actually did a great job of finding me a few times there to kind of get me going. He drove and kicked and their defense was collapsing or he kicked it out and I was able to knock a few shots down. But my teammates trust me to take those shots. They find me, and, like I said, it's up to me to knock them down. Q. Klay, I'm not trying to say it's been easy in these two games, but you guys have had your way with the way things have gone. What do you expect from the Cavaliers as these games go back to Cleveland? KLAY THOMPSON: They'll probably play with a little more energy. That's natural when you go home. Probably with a sense of desperation. They might go big. You never know. But we'll be prepared. I mean, I'm just happy with the way we battled tonight. Everyone came ready to play, and it was really an all-around team effort, and obviously Draymond was special with his shot making. Q. First of all, Draymond, Steph Curry was on the bench in foul trouble and he was just having a ball watching you hit some of your shots. I don't know if you noticed any of Steph's reaction, but you seemed to be channelling him a little bit with some of the threes you were hitting anyway. DRAYMOND GREEN: Don't tell me that. Steve Kerr wouldn't like you if you tell me I'm channelling my inner Steph Curry. But, no, those were rhythm shots. I'm sure you're talking about the one where I danced at the top a little bit and shot the three. Awful shot. It was pathetic, but everybody -- the ball stopped moving, players stopped moving, so I thought, all right, well, I'm going to get some shot up, and it happened to go in. But like you said, Steph was on the bench in foul trouble, and someone has to step up. Obviously, I don't look at that situation and say, oh, I need to take over offensively, but the shots were coming my way, and my teammates found me and I was able to knock a few of them down. When Steph's on the bench, it really turns into a complete team effort because Steph can do so much by himself to create offense for guys that when he goes out, we really use each other. We lean on Klay a lot when he's out there. And they were completely collapsing to him. He was kicking it out and finding shooters. Q. Klay, I don't know if you noticed, but Draymond actually had five three-pointers tonight to lead the team. At what point can he apply to be a Splash Brother? DRAYMOND GREEN: Stop it (laughing). KLAY THOMPSON: I mean, tonight he was one of us. Especially the shots he made off the dribble from three. You know, those aren't easy, fading away. As a shooter, you know in your head that's a good shot when you've seen the ball go in the rim three or four times. So Draymond's never going to turn down an open shot. He's always going to make the right play every time, and he did tonight. He had an amazing game. Q. Draymond, you guys talk about how you guys can fill different needs for the team, but volume scoring isn't necessarily what you do. How were you able to do that tonight without warping and getting away from what the team tries to do? DRAYMOND GREEN: Like I said, they're really collapsing on Steph and Klay. Guys get the ball into the paint and they're collapsing down, and I was spotting it up, and they found me in a great spot to knock shots down. I caught a couple interior passes from Andre to put me in great position to score. So really just taking what the defense gives me. And if that's the shot they're going to give me, and I know the amount of work I put in, to step up with confidence and try to knock it down. I don't come into the game saying, oh, I have to shoot a lot more. Like that's not me. That's not what I do for this team. But at the end of the day if the game says shoot, you're supposed to shoot. Because usually when you don't, it turns into a disaster. So just try to really take what the defense gives me. Q. After that Oklahoma City series, which was obviously just so tense, every moment of it, from an outsider's view this just looks different, looks easy almost -- my words, not yours. What is your reaction to that? Does it feel different? Does it feel in any way easier than that Oklahoma City series? KLAY THOMPSON: I mean, not really. At this point in the season everything you get is really, really hard, and it's about to get even harder when we go to Cleveland. Obviously Cleveland doesn't have the same length as Oklahoma, so that might be the one thing that OKC really bothered us with. At the same time they're still a better three-point shooting team, I think. And we've just done such a great job trying to take that part of the game away from them. But like I said before, the hardest part of the series is coming up when we go to Cleveland. They'll be playing with a sense of desperation, and their fans are going to be really hungry. They're not very nice in Cleveland, the fans, and that's all right. That's what makes the game so much fun. Q. Draymond, Kerr mentioned that maybe you picked up the momentum from finishing off Oklahoma City and it was so hard. Do you feel like you've taken something from that series and taken it to this series? DRAYMOND GREEN: I mean, that was a very tough series. It's just like anything in life, you go through something tough and you make it through, you grow from it, and I think we definitely grew from that series with it being so tough. You try to ride your momentum into this series, but, I mean, who is fooling anyone? It's a completely different game, a completely different series, completely different team. So it's been good for us to start this series off, and, like I said, I think we definitely grew from that series, but it's also two completely different challenges. Obviously OKC with their length and athleticism bothered us in a different way than Cleveland where they have some length but not as much length as OKC. And then Cleveland's more so where you've got LeBron kind of playing centerfield and picking stuff off and things like that, so you've got to make different reads. It's two completely different teams, but, like I said, when you go through tough challenges, you kind of grow from it. Q. I know after Game 1 you don't want to use the word comfortable against -- playing against Cleveland. Over the last three contests, you've beaten them by a combined 82 points. What do you attribute that to? DRAYMOND GREEN: I think our focus has been there. We've really locked in on the game plan. The intensity level has been there, and most importantly we've gotten it done on the defensive side of the basketball. To hold this team to 77 points, that's a very good ballclub, that's not something that's easy to do. But we really locked in. We stuck to the game plan, and we've been able to do that. So that's great and all. But it doesn't matter anymore. Like if we won those three games by a combined three points, that's three wins. So those wins are gone. I mean, obviously it's good to be up 2-0, but we've got to go to Cleveland. Only thing we did tonight was defend homecourt. We didn't do anything special. Everybody's going to look and say, oh, man they won by 35 points or 30 points whatever it was, but at the end of the day, we just want to win, and we defended our homecourt. Like Klay said, he already spoke on it, the toughest part is going to Cleveland. So now we've got to look ahead to that and go in with an even higher focus level than we had at home. Q. You guys have held them to 83 points on 36% shooting. Why is the defense clicking so well? It seems like they can't get anything done. KLAY THOMPSON: I just think it's easy to fall in love with our offense. For the casual fan, they only see -- the whole year they see our highlights. Our rim protection and perimeter defenders have been so great. We have so many like-sized guys on the perimeter, we're able to switch and make them beat us one-on-one. They're capable of it, but over 48 minutes, if we stick with the game plan, I think we'll be all right. They've got a lot of guys that can get hot. They did miss some shots, but like I said before, our length and our activity off the ball, especially these first two games. We have to play with the same focus on Wednesday, because they're going to come out gunning for us. Q. Draymond, do you think this defensive performance puts you guys or solidifies you guys as one of the best teams of all time? DRAYMOND GREEN: No, we've got two more wins before you can even consider saying that. I don't really look at are you the best team of all time, are we the best team of all time? Because I think it's all subjective. To say we're better than the Showtime Lakers, how can you say that? We never played them. KLAY THOMPSON: We are better than the Showtime Lakers. DRAYMOND GREEN: Like saying we're better than the Bulls, it's like we'll never play them. It's two completely different eras. So I don't really get off on the are you the best team of all times. I'm trying to win rings, and that's only goal. Everybody else can decide what they want to decide on who is the best team of all time, who is not. We've got to win two more games, and they'll be the hardest two wins of this entire season. So that's my focus. Q. When we had Coach Lue in here someone asked him about the seven-game win streak and if he thinks his team has a mental hurdle to get over. On the flip side, with you guys heading into Cleveland right into the eye of the hurricane, how do you guys use that seven-game streak? Do you think maybe in the back of your head that there's a hurdle for these guys to get over, and what do you draw from that? DRAYMOND GREEN: I don't think there's a hurdle for them at all. And I don't think anyone on our team thinks like that. We don't go in thinking, hey, man, we beat these guys seven times, we've got them. No. That's not our mindset at all because immediately once that becomes your mindset, you'll lose. Like Klay just spoke on, they've got a lot of talented guys over there who can get hot, a lot of guys who can get it going in a hurry and change an entire, not a game, an entire series. So our focus is to win one game at a time. That's the way we've approached it thus far, and that's the approach we'll continue to take. I think a couple of those seven games were regular season games, so those really don't matter. Now we've won two in a row, these two are really the only two that matter right now because it puts us ahead 2-0 in the series. But that's a very good ballclub with great leadership of guys who have been there. They're not thinking, hey, man, they've got us. We need to get over this hurdle. They're thinking, hey, they won two games at home. Now let's go win two at home. Our mindset is we took care of homecourt, now let's get one on the road, maybe two, but let's start with one. Q. For both of you guys, NBA Finals, you guys have won by 15 and 33. Are you guys surprised at all by the lopsided victories here? Klay, I guess you're not, because you guys are better than the Showtime Lakers (laughing)? KLAY THOMPSON: I mean, not really. I think we've just been clicking these last two games. Obviously we've got to cut down on the 20 turnovers. That's too much. We can't go to Cleveland and have 20 turnovers. They'll feast on that. But our focus has been there. We've got too many great pros on this team to let it slide at this point in the season. We've come this far. We really play 10, 11 guys and everyone contributes. So I'm not that surprised because we've been such a great home team all year. But I'll be surprised if we do it twice on the road, I'll tell you that much. So we've just got to enjoy this tonight but quick turn around. Q. LeBron just scored a shot, just 7 for 17, and he had [7] turnovers. How do you guys do that? DRAYMOND GREEN: You just try to make everything tough. Some of the shots LeBron missed, I mean, you've got to give a little credit to our defense. But some of them he missed, he just missed. It happens like that sometimes in the game of basketball. That's why none of us is perfect. But I think we've got a good game plan that we've stuck to and that we have to continue to do throughout the rest of this series. But it's been a complete team effort. You can't guard LeBron with one guy. It's tough to do. I think our team has done a great job of helping each other out, but also while helping each other out, not just giving up threes. You know, flying around and trying to contest their three-point shots as well. So if we continue to play like that on the defensive end where everybody's helping each other, we're really tough to beat, and that's kind of been the key through the first two games of this series. FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports   |
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