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NBA EASTERN CONFERENCE FINALS: CELTICS VS CAVALIERSMay 21, 2017Marcus SmartAvery BradleyBoston, Massachusetts: Postgame Celtics - 111, Cavaliers - 108. Q. Avery, could you walk us through the last play, how you came to be so free? AVERY BRADLEY: I think it was the play called by Brad Stevens. He did a great job of putting us in the right position, forcing them to have to help and not be able to switch. Al Horford made a great screen and Marcus Smart made an even better pass, and I was able to knock down a shot. It was a great play by Brad. Q. We spoke before the game and you told me that Marcus Smart lives for these moments. What can you say about his game? AVERY BRADLEY: He was aggressive from the beginning of the game. That's what we needed him to be. A lot of people counted us out with Isaiah not being here, and he is a big part of this team. But Smart took this opportunity to come out and be aggressive on both ends of the floor and make plays for our team. He was able to do that tonight. We need Smart to play that way all the time. He's a very good player. We know he's capable of having big games for us on the offensive end, and I think it's definitely going to give him confidence for the rest of the series. Q. Avery and Marcus, you just mentioned Brad's after-timeout plays. He had a couple others before that one. What's the feeling coming out of the huddle after Brad draws something up as a team of what you guys are going to be able to do, regardless if the ball goes in or not? AVERY BRADLEY: I think that one of the good things about this team is we're able to believe in whatever Brad draws up. If it's a good play, bad play, whatever it is, we all believe in it. I think that always helps because you're able to just read and react after that. One of the plays that he drew up when Jonas Jerebko hit the shot, it was for me to lay the ball up. But it was a play that I knew that if they helped, Jonas would be wide open, and he was able to knock down his shot. Those are all plays that Brad makes, and then it's our job to go out there and make sure that we make the next right play. MARCUS SMART: Definitely. It's not easy with a game like that to come up with a great play. You've just got to commend Brad for that. He does a great job night in and night out, and like Avery said, whether the play is good or bad, it's on us to react. He puts us in the right position to succeed, and it's on us to follow through with it. He made a great play, Al made a good screen, Jae made a great cut and Avery did his job. Q. Avery, on that play, what was the point where you went from the layup and seeing the Cavs collapse on you and then making the kick-out to Jonas? What was going through your head? AVERY BRADLEY: I knew LeBron was going to help. I knew I was going to suck the defense in, and it was my job to act like I was going to lay the ball up, and kick it out to Jonas. I told Jonas to make sure he was ready. I wish he shot a three. But I'm just happy for Jonas. He was prepared and ready to shoot the ball, and he made some really big plays for our team tonight. He made the most of his opportunity. Jonas went games without playing, and now he was able to come in and make some really big plays for us tonight. I just want him to keep being ready to shoot the ball, because we're going to make sure we find him. Q. Avery, can you describe the last 48 hours? I'm sure you guys were really down about Game 2, then the Isaiah blow on Saturday, but then to come back and do this -- can you describe how you guys got yourselves together to be able to do this? AVERY BRADLEY: It was hard. It was embarrassing. I know everyone leaving the arena after last game, we were pretty down. But once we were able to get together the next day, we decided that we're just going to go out and play hard, and whatever happens happens. We're going to go play with our backs against the wall, come out swinging. We're going to go and play as hard as we can. We're going to be the toughest team. We're going to battle for the loose balls. We're going to play hard consistently the entire game. We wanted to be that team. That was our mindset. We never counted ourselves out. We knew that if we came out and played hard, we would give ourselves a chance. You saw that tonight. And we're going to continue to play that way throughout the series. MARCUS SMART: Definitely. I said it before: We definitely miss Isaiah. Him leaving after the first half and we're really not knowing what's going on, and then we get our heads smashed in, and you look up into those rafters and see those fans that have been with you all year and their heads down and talking to you, it was embarrassing. You wanted to do it for those guys. IT sending out a text and letting us know he's not going to be with us anymore, that was devastating. He's a big key to this team, not just to this team as a player but as a human being. He's a great person and everybody gets along with IT. We lost our brother who couldn't be in this battle with us. We understand it. We thank him for it. But he just kept talking to us. We can still do it. Everybody else counted us out. We kept believing in ourselves. We came in tonight into hostile territory and did our job. Q. First couple games when they made plays, made shots, you guys seemed as a group to deflate a little bit. But how much does Marcus's attitude, when things go like that, he seems to get more pissed off, how did that help? AVERY BRADLEY: I think it helped us out a lot. They're going to make plays. It's our job to make sure we're out there playing basketball, not complaining. That was the main thing for us tonight. The foul count wasn't where we wanted it to be. We can't complain about that. We can't control that. All we can control is the way that we play. I kept telling everybody that we can't complain, because it's hurting us on the offensive end because you're thinking about it. You just have to go out there and play the game of basketball. If we continue to play that way and stick together and play hard no matter what adversity we go through, I feel like we're going to be the best team that we can be. It showed tonight. We had a few times down the floor where we were complaining, and it ended up hurting us on both ends of the floor. But we got over it and we were able to stick together at the end of the game and make some big plays. I think it started with Marcus Smart, how poised he was at the end of the game. He was able to get us in our sets and make the right play, make some really big plays for our team tonight. Q. They're in control this series, they're in control of the game in the third quarter, up 21. What changed at that point? How were you guys able to find whatever it was deep down inside and come back and win this game? MARCUS SMART: It was just us. Everybody in this locker room on this team has been told we couldn't do something or had somebody that really didn't believe in us. We just kind of put that together all in one, and we just, like Avery said, told each other no matter what happens we've got to be the hardest-playing team. We just have to go out there and play. That's what we did. Everybody kept believing in one another, and the biggest thing we did tonight is we didn't argue with each other. We argued with each other a little bit in those two losses back at home, and that really hurt us. Tonight we were just really positive with one another. We came out, and Brad, whatever he drew up, we tried to go out there and execute it to the best of our ability, and shots started falling for us. Q. Avery, LeBron had three in the second half, 11 for the game. Defensively what did you guys do to slow him down? AVERY BRADLEY: I feel like guys like Jae Crowder and Al Horford, whoever switched on him, they did a great job. Like I said, we understand not only him but Kyrie, they're going to make tough shots. It's our job to make sure that we try to make everything hard on him and have a mindset to chip away. What I mean by chip away is not try to win the game or get back in the game with one shot. Just force enough shots. We understood that we needed to move the ball around, get good shots and get continuous stops on the defensive end. That's big. For a team that you could say that is a young team, we came out here and I feel like we were mature tonight with the way that we played. We were able to stick together, get consistent stop. We're playing against a really good team. LeBron, we understand that down the stretch of the game, he's going to make plays for his team. I felt like we did a great job trying to box guys out, defending him. He's a tough guard, but we really did a good job of forcing everything, making everything hard on him. Marcus did a great job on Kyrie tonight. It's our job to make sure that we have that same mindset next game because if we don't, we're not going to have a chance to win the game. Q. Marcus, you've known for the last 24 hours that this moment was coming and that you were going to start this game. Not to say that you prepared any differently, but you had to have had some different thoughts going through your head leading into this game as opposed to a regular one when you're coming off the bench. Can you walk us through what your thoughts were and what your mindset was coming into this game? MARCUS SMART: Really just coming in I just kept telling myself, you have nothing to lose, just go out there and play. You've been working hard throughout this whole year on your game. Just let it flow and let it show. These guys and the coaching staff did a really good job of just encouraging me, especially when my shot hasn't been falling. Free throws, missing those. They've just really been on me, staying on me to stay positive and keep going. Coming into this game, I just really wanted to stay positive with myself and make sure that I could do everything that I could do to help my team, whether that was scoring, passing the ball, playing defense, whatever it was. Tonight I had a great shooting night, and that was huge for us. FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports   |
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