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NBA FINALS: CLEVELAND VS GOLDEN STATEJune 3, 2017Zaza PachuliaOakland, California: Practice Day Q. You talked the other day about the very wide ranges of music that gets played in the locker room, is it safe to assume that Rihanna's music is banned from the Warriors locker room? ZAZA PACHULIA: Oh, wow, that's a good one. Yeah, I have not heard Rihanna's music but I'm sure everybody has her on their play list. I do, for sure, I do. Q. Could you hear her from the sidelines? ZAZA PACHULIA: No, I couldn't. Again, it was too loud. There were way more Warriors fans than Cavs fans. So we feed off the energy from our fans and that's been going on throughout the year and that's the beauty of playing in Oracle Arena where you have the whole Dub Nation supporting you and you can feel their energy and enthusiasm. It's amazing. It's such a privilege to play in front of the sell-out crowds. Q. Is there ever a situation where someone on the sidelines like that can impact the game? Like a Spike Lee or someone like that? ZAZA PACHULIA: It depends on the players, it depends on the personality. Some guys can feed off that. If you don't have that edge, you don't have that energy, but some trash talk, you pick one person, and the trash talk gets you going. So I'm not the type of guy. I get motivated for getting my double espresso or something and coming to the arena, I'm already motivated. Q. JaVale mentioned the other day just about the strategy for Tristan is that it doesn't matter who comes down with that board, it's not worrying about the offensive or defensive rebound that you're trying to come down with. Can you expand more kind of on that doubling affect with the two or three guys that you would throw at him? ZAZA PACHULIA: On who? Q. On Tristan Thompson. ZAZA PACHULIA: I don't think we threw any double team at him. Maybe I misunderstand you. Q. Just in terms of blocking him out with two or three guys kind of giving him different looks and frustrating him on that. What does that mean in terms of not coming down with the board, having that focus? ZAZA PACHULIA: Bottom line, I never heard a double team or playing two or three guys on him. At the end of the day we got to play team defense. I mean, they have such great talent, especially offensively, their outside shooters, their penetrators, and obviously we all know LeBron and Kyrie what they're capable to do. But we're trying to get them out of their sweet spots and their comfort zone. That's the biggest key for us. And also with Tristan, what he does, it's obvious that with his energy he tries to get offensive rebounds, crash the offensive glass, so we just try to take away some of his strengths. Obviously, it's impossible to take everything away, there's a reason why their team is in The Finals, but if you take away some of the strengths they have, we love our chances every single game. Q. Could you sense a little bit of frustration from him early? I know that he got pulled midway through the third quarter, they went with a smaller lineup then. When did you notice that, hey, we have got a good strategy going with this? ZAZA PACHULIA: Well, this game is about runs. I think that we all know that pretty well, in the beginning of the first half and in the third quarter we were aggressive defensively and obviously we had a good game plan, we have a game plan and we execute the game plan pretty well, I think. And not necessarily that Tristan was on the floor, even when they play the small lineup, we are pretty good. We kind of relaxed in the fourth quarter because we were up by a lot of points. But for us it doesn't matter who is on the court, we try to play our game and execute our game plan. That's the bottom line. Q. After the game both Steph and KD said that there were some improvements and you guys can be much better. ZAZA PACHULIA: Absolutely. Q. In your view, what can you guys improve on? ZAZA PACHULIA: Well honestly, we all agreed that we all have room to improve, even before watching the tape. Once we start watching tape the last two days it's obvious what we can do better. And we're going to do our best to close the gap and play the perfect Warrior basketball. FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports   |
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