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NBA WESTERN CONFERENCE FINALS: WARRIORS VS SPURS

May 16, 2017

Mike Brown

Oakland, California - Postgame

Warriors - 136, Spurs - 100

COACH BROWN: Sitting in the back kind of watching, and you guys asked Pop some good questions. All of them. Enjoyed the responses.

You've got to give our guys credit. I thought in Game 1, you know, Steve [Kerr] did too, we didn't come out with a sense of urgency, so that was one of the messages that we gave to our team right from jump street. We've got to come out from the beginning with a sense of urgency. We can't ease into the game.

We give all of our guys credit. They did not do that. They came out with a sense of urgency from the beginning, and they played that way for 48 minutes. Our entire roster contributed.

Obviously, Pat McCaw came off the bench and had a great performance on both ends of the floor. They put a big on him, and we've seen him shoot in practice. We've seen him shoot during the regular season. You know, the big sloughed off him. Looked to help a lot, ball got swung to him, and he knocked down shots. He was terrific.

You know, Klay, again, one of our keys going into this series was you're not going to stop a guy like Patty [Mills], especially and their offense, the way he moves and all that. But you want him to try to take as tough of shots as he can. I give Klay a lot of credit. Patty Mills is tough to chase around, and Klay is trying to chase him, and getting help from his teammates. But that's work. It takes a lot out of you. Give Klay a lot of credit.

Our bench is fantastic. Bench has 63 points, and again, our guys shared the basketball. We had 39 assists on 50 shots, which is phenomenal. The one thing we have to keep trying to clean up, and it was another point of emphasis coming into the series, was rebounding the basketball. They had 23 offensive rebounds tonight, and some of it was a product of there were a lot of missed shots, but we can do a better job of cleaning that up going forward.

We know Game 3's going to be tough.

Q. If you heard Coach, he said his team didn't have any belief, especially after Kawhi. But seeing that team down without Kawhi, without Tony [Parker], was it a fair fight tonight?
COACH BROWN: A what?

Q. A fair fight.
COACH BROWN: It's a good team. You know, and I think they went on the road and they beat Houston in a Game 6 where they didn't have Kawhi. Obviously [they're] extremely well coached and well prepared, and they're a very good basketball team. So for us, this was a good win.

Q. You mentioned Patrick McCaw. What convinced you guys to give him Iguodala's minutes in the first quarter? And how hard is that for a guy who played barely at all in the previous series to come out and get that many minutes and be that productive?
COACH BROWN: He's been doing it all year. K.D. went down in the Portland series, and I don't -- can't remember how much Pat was playing, but we put him in the starting lineup, and he was productive for us then. That's happened from time to time with guys.

I go back and give Steve Kerr credit. He's played 27 guys throughout the course of the year. I don't know how he does it, but he does it every game. That's shown benefits for us, especially as of late. Guys are -- not only do they believe in themselves, but their teammates believe in them, the coaching staff believes in them.

It's like clockwork when you try to plug a guy in here or guy there. That was Steve's suggestion. Steve suggested that if we put Patty in Andre's place and it made sense, especially with Kawhi not playing tonight, and he stepped up and had a big game for us.

Q. Mike, would you say that the Spurs did you a favor by knocking you in the mouth early in Game 1? Because it seems like since then your team intensity-wise has picked up a lot.
COACH BROWN: Obviously San Antonio came out great in Game 1, and we felt like we didn't come out with a sense of urgency. We felt like we tried to ease into the game. You can't ease into the game against that team. They're too good.

Getting hit like that, yeah, I mean it shook us a little bit. We felt fortunate, lucky, whatever you want to call it, to come back and get the win. But hopefully because of that it will keep us more focused going forward.

Q. You're up big early, you're up bigger at halftime, you're up bigger throughout. Does the significance of a blowout mean anything to you? We're going to look at this and say, wow, this series might be over. Is that something you have to argue against? What does a blowout mean to you?
COACH BROWN: No. What you look at, it doesn't matter how many points you win by. Sometimes it doesn't matter if you lose because sometimes things can just kind of fall the other team's way and they lose. But you may do things the right way. So more than anything, yes, we want the win more than anything else.

But how you play, too, because we want to keep developing good habits going forward. The score really doesn't matter. It's how we got to the score, how we played defensively, how we played offensively. Did we do the things that we emphasized going into the series? Who played well for us on this part of the roster? Which combination worked good for us? Those are things we looked at.

Obviously, if you can win by X-amount of points, that's great, because now a guy like Damian Jones played six and a half minutes in a playoff game. Mac [James McAdoo] played 11 minutes in a playoff game. So it's good for us all in that regard.

Q. Since you were listening to Pop's press conference --
COACH BROWN: I heard everything.

Q. -- you heard him say his team didn't have belief from the beginning of the game. As the opponent, what sense of that do you get as you guys are out on the floor playing against them?
COACH BROWN: I mean, I don't know. I can't say what they're feeling or thinking or anything like that. I just know that we told our guys. Steve told our guys we've got to come out and play with a sense of urgency from the beginning. We can't ease into the game. And that was his message to the team afterwards, too, going into Game 3.

We think Game 1 was tough? Oh, down in San Antonio it's going to be more than a dogfight. There is no easing into any game down there because they're already a dangerous team, especially being down 0-2 and getting Kawhi back. They know they need to get that one. So Game 3's going to be tough for us.

Q. Much more important question, was this revenge for the bus?
COACH BROWN: Was this revenge for the bus? Not quite. I'm still a little hurt (laughing). I'm just glad they didn't put the cuffs on me, though. Not in front of my kid.

Q. One last McCaw question. If there had been any criticism this year, it's been his reluctance to shoot. Passed up a couple open looks early in the game. Did anybody get on him and say, hey, just shoot those things? And how often does that happen that you guys have to remind him, hey, take that shot, you can shoot?
COACH BROWN: Well, Pat's obviously a rookie, and he's a young rookie at that. We've all seen him shoot in practice. He can shoot the ball, especially if you're going to give him time like that. He can do a lot of things offensively. Yeah, when he first came into the game, he passed a couple of shots, and I just don't think he realized that he was going to be that wide open. He had LaMarcus on him. LaMarcus was basically in the paint trying to help everyplace, else every time he caught the ball.

So he had time to shoot just like he was in the gym during practice. We've seen him knock down shot after shot after shot. So when he passed up the first one or two, guys on the floor said it, all the coaches yelled it, yelled at him to take that shot and give him credit, he stepped up and knocked them down.

Q. You coached some of the biggest names of this era, really. How much are you enjoying the Steph Curry experience from a head-coaching standpoint?
COACH BROWN: Well, just being a part of this organization is fun. I've said it many times, and I've been fortunate, blessed and lucky to be around a lot of great players and teams in this league. When you look at the roster that we have here, I don't know if there's any other team that I've been with that has this type of roster.

So having said that, it's fun, it's exciting and I just feel fortunate to be a part of it.

Q. I think we can surmise that the Boston and Cleveland teams are watching this team. What would you like them to be thinking after they watch this game and watch them tonight and what you guys did?
COACH BROWN: I don't know. I have no answer for that. I'm not trying to forecast what I think Boston nor Cleveland should be thinking about.

Q. (No Microphone).
COACH BROWN: I don't care if they're impressed or not. We've got a tough team in front of us come Game 3. That's a tough environment. We've got to make sure we get our guys ready to play down there. And if we don't, we could end up losing the game. That's all I'm focused on really right now.

Q. When you have the bench playing like this, does it give you a little bit more flexibility rotation-wise going forward? Do you feel like you can make some more tweaks when they're playing like that?
COACH BROWN: We've felt this way anyway, but come playoff time the game is usually close, and you want your best guys on the floor. So what that usually means is increased minutes for K.D., Draymond, Klay, and Steph for the most part. Then guys basically from there have to be ready to play. Like Zaza, he played extended minutes in the last game. That was not planned. So you want to play your top guns bigger minutes, and then Steve's always had confidence in the bench, and they felt that. Because they felt it, we feel like they'll always be ready when the number's called.

FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports

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