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NBA FINALS: CLEVELAND VS GOLDEN STATE

June 1, 2017

Mike Brown

Oakland, California: Postgame 7

Warriors - 113, Cavaliers - 91

COACH BROWN: I give our guys credit. Steve just said it to our guys at the end of the game, we had a formula, and our guys did a nice job trying to follow it. And he give them credit. He's talked from day one about winning the possession game, and our guys had four turnovers for the course of the game. That's a good defensive team and they're active and athletic and long and anticipate really well. So for them to be able to jump the passing lanes like they have in the past and so on and so forth, for our guys to go out there for 48 minutes and have four turnovers, that was fantastic.

Another thing we talked about was keeping them off the offensive glass and Tristan Thompson's a load. He's been destroying almost everyone he's come across in the Playoffs on the offensive glass and Zaza Pachulia didn't play a ton of minutes, but the minutes he played, especially at the beginning of the game, kind of set the tone for us on the offensive glass.

So small contributions like that from our entire roster bode well for a good game. Obviously K.D. scored and Steph scored, but what you like about both those guys, Steph had 10 assists, he also had six rebounds as your point guard. K.D. had eight assists and then eight rebounds.

And then last but not least, I tell you what, everybody's probably going to talk about it, and the number wasn't good in terms of 3 for 16, but we have asked Klay Thompson to do a lot throughout the course of our Playoff run so far. He's guarded some tremendous, tremendous point guards. And he's chasing Kyrie around and pick-and-roll action, pin-down action, iso action and transition, and you're not going to stop Kyrie, Kyrie's going to score, that's what he does. And he's one of the best in the world at it. And give Klay Thompson a ton of credit because he's out there fighting over screens, getting hit, trying to contest, trying to rebound, trying to do it all for us defensively. And then offensively he just keeps playing the right way. That's what we love about him.

Q. When you look at Kevin Durant and his aggressiveness, in particular going to the basket, and the way you guys were able to dominate in the paint, did Durant set that tone for you guys? And did you -- is that something you felt you could exploit?
COACH BROWN: No doubt. We were talking about it before the game, and Steve suggested we try to get the ball in his hands right away and put him in position where he can attack downhill. So we tried to do that early on, and K.D. didn't settle. When he had an opportunity, he went downhill, and it worked out well.

Q. We all know that Durant and LeBron's the marquis matchup. What were your expectations for that going into the game, and since they ended up guarding each other almost the whole time, did you expect that and how did you think that turned out?
COACH BROWN: Those are two big household names, so we know you guys and the fans are going to want to see that and pick up on it. I'm sure LeBron probably thinks he could play better, and you tip your hat off to K.D. because we put him on plenty of guys tonight, not only did he guard LeBron, but he guarded Kevin Love for a while. Then we put him on Kyrie also.

So his length and his versatility really helped out. And I thought defensively overall on all of the guys that he guarded he did a fantastic job. He was a presence mentally and physically. He was locked in.

Q. What was the emphasis for him specifically defending LeBron? Just stay big in front of him?
COACH BROWN: Stay big, and LeBron is obviously a very good 3-point shooter, so we wanted K.D. to make him try to drive at times as opposed to being able to dance at the top of the floor and measure a three. And try to use your length at the rim and see if he can score over the top of him.

Q. I know you weren't with the team last year, but I'm sure you saw a lot of the film. It seemed like in the Playoffs last year the tactic by opposing defenses was to really crowd at the 3-point line, make you guys score inside. Cleveland had success with it. Obviously today that didn't work for them. Like how does specifically Durant just change the dynamic of that with a team trying to crowd your outside shooting?
COACH BROWN: Well, obviously he's seven feet and if he doesn't have the ball in his hands, if he's outside the 3-point line, you can't help off him much. If you got Klay out there, you can't help off him much neither. So depending upon who has the ball, that key is -- or that lane could be wide open. And so we feel like our opponents have to pick their poison. They're going to crowd the paint and take away our layups or are they going to guard the three.

It's just a pleasure of having guys that can knock down that three ball or that are threats out there. Then on the flip side, you saw it a couple of times, we were stressing to our wings, Steve stressed to our wings even at halftime, hey, run the floor and fill the corners. If you do that, with the way we shoot the ball, what you saw Kevin -- I think K.D. got maybe three uncontested dunks because we had Steph in one corner and Klay in the other corner and K.D. was pushing the basketball. We want our guys to push on every possession, make or miss, because we feel like we play a lot of guys, we feel like our guys are well rested and we feel like we should be able to attack on every single play.

And our guys did that, but it was really important to get our guys to the corner to flatten out the defense and make them decide, are you going to leave the corner 3-point shooter and stop the ball or are you going to stay home.

Q. Despite you're incredible dominance in the paint in the first half, it was still only an eight-point game. What was the talk at halftime, what do you think fed into that 13-0 run and keeping them off the board for more than four minutes?
COACH BROWN: We felt pretty good at halftime. We felt like we played pretty good basketball. We missed a lot of layups that we usually make and we missed a few jumpers that we usually make. We felt that we were trying to keep the game simple offensively because maybe we had one or two turnovers I think at halftime, and defensively we knew we could play better. There were a couple of times where we got messed up in our rotations and we kind of stopped and we didn't continue to give the multiple effort to close out the shooters and they knocked down some shots.

So we again we felt like we can play better than what we were playing defensively. And the second half I thought Draymond set the tone. It was an -- I think maybe the first or second possession I think they tried to post Steph with JR Smith, and Steph did a nice job fighting him, and Draymond came over and there was a loose ball on the ground, and Draymond was the first one to the floor. Came up with it and we were off to the races, knocked down a three maybe, and from there with the fans in this building, it's tough to recover for anybody.

Q. Quick follow-up, with the magnitude of this win, does that have a mental impact on both teams going forward?
COACH BROWN: I don't think so. I think that they're a veteran team and they have been in this situation before. So they're definitely not going to panic, they're not going to think that we have an advantage, and our guys don't either.

Our guys, again, they're -- it's a veteran group, they know what they need to do, and so the challenge for them is -- or for us is are we going to go out and do it again.

Q. You've been around the game for a while, you coached LeBron, anybody that K.D. resembles with his height and his quickness? He's almost like a point guard who can play center.
COACH BROWN: LeBron?

Q. K.D.
COACH BROWN: Yeah, K.D.'s so versatile. We put him basically at all four positions and we probably could play him at the five or at the center spot. But doggone Bob Myers signed like 18 centers, so we got to find minutes for them.

(Laughter.)

So K.D. can't play center. But other than that, he can play any of the other four positions.

Q. Coach Kerr always talks about the assist-to-turnover ratio and how important it is. Have you ever seen, it was 20-1 at the half and 31-4 at the end of the game. Especially for a Playoff game, have you seen that before? And were you surprised at all by the fact that they came out so sharp after nine days of not playing?
COACH BROWN: No, after being around this group for a year, anything that they do that's out of the ordinary, which the turnover -- assist-to-turnover ratio is, that doesn't surprise me. Because they're capable of doing some extraordinary things. But, yeah, 31 assists, four turnovers, who would have thought? I wouldn't imagine it, especially going into Game 1 against that team. Because that team is -- they're very good defensively, they switch a lot of stuff, they're in the passing lanes, they're physical, and so I give our guys credit for taking care of the ball. And as Steve has preached from day one, if we win the possession game, we'll have a chance to win the game.

Q. Obviously you guys dominated and win a big game, but is there anything you are not satisfied with, especially going into Game 2?
COACH BROWN: Yeah, just like them, I'm sure they feel like we could -- they could play better, but we feel like we can shoot better, not just from the perimeter but, again, like I said, we feel like we had some bunnies around the rim that we didn't finish that we normally finish. So that's one area we feel like we can do a better job in.

And then in the first half, again, I thought defensively the multiple effort wasn't quite there all the time. We stopped on rotations, and they got some good looks. So we can continue to get better in that area especially.

Q. How important is Draymond to winning that possession game that you stressed so often?
COACH BROWN: He's extremely important because he comes up with -- obviously the loose ball that I thought was one of the big catalysts for us going on a run in the second half, comes up with 50/50 balls all the time. He rebounds the basketball. I mean, he had 11 rebounds tonight. And then on top of that, if he's not rebounding the ball, he's tipping it out or he's boxing guys out. And so you have a guy that does that, flip side, defensively, get deflections or get steals like he does, you got a good chance of winning the possession game.

MODERATOR: Thank you, Coach.

COACH BROWN: Thank you, guys.

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