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NBA FINALS: CLEVELAND VS GOLDEN STATE

June 11, 2017

Klay Thompson

Oakland, California: Practice Day

Q. Last year after what happened to Draymond missing Game 5, what do you think it means to him to have essentially a second chance in this type of situation to close it out at home and play in this game?
KLAY THOMPSON: Yeah, it's like dÃ©jÃ vu, except obviously Draymond being here is very helpful. And he's a very smart player. He's learned from his mistakes, and he doesn't make the same mistake twice. I know he's going to have a great game tomorrow. He's a warrior. Pun intended. And, he's one of the best at responding to adversity. He might have got riled up last game, but it's not going to affect him tomorrow.

Q. How about you personally?
KLAY THOMPSON: I'm excited, just because it would have been sweet to win in Cleveland, whatever, but it's in the past now and we have a golden opportunity in front of us, and it's just going to be fun to play in front of our home crowd again. It was pretty rowdy in Cleveland, and that's what we expected.

Expect the same tomorrow. We can't rely just on our crowd to get us through the game, we got to come out from the jump and be locked in. If we do that and play with great energy, should be a great night.

Q. You and Steph didn't have the greatest shooting nights in Game 4. How do you expect yourself and Steph to play tomorrow?
KLAY THOMPSON: We expect to respond very aggressively, come out, be ourselves, have fun, move the ball, share the ball, and take great shots. We got to pick up our defensive intensity, though. They were too comfortable in Game 4, I think. Any time a team makes 24 threes, they're way too comfortable. So we got to limit them from the perimeter and start some easy stuff in the back court. And we'll come ready to play tomorrow.

Q. What did you guys learn in Game 4 that you can apply to Game 5?
KLAY THOMPSON: What did we learn in Game 4? Limit their three-point opportunities. They're a dangerous team when they're hitting 15 to 20 threes a game. They're almost impossible to stop. Got to get back to the Game 1 and 2 numbers where it was like 10 or 12 or 13. Keep it down around there. They got great one-on-one players who are going to score.

But can't get deflated. Make them beat us that way. But when they're moving the ball around the perimeter, finding open shooters, it's too hard to beat them. So we got to limit their perimeter three-point shooting opportunities, and we should be in a good position.

Q. Why were they so successful in shooting such a high volume of threes?
KLAY THOMPSON: Some of it was their ball movement and their ability to break us down from the perimeter, and some of it was us just not being ready to play and not ready to rotate, not helping each other fully.

So give Cleveland credit for their offense. They were moving the ball really well and slicing us up. But on the other side of that, we kind of let them. Our intensity wasn't the same as it was in the first three games, so we'll get back to that tomorrow.

Q. What would it mean to clinch at home?
KLAY THOMPSON: It would be great. It would be great for the city, it would be great for the Bay, it would be great for the organization, us as players. We worked so hard. We put ourselves in this position where we have this opportunity, so we got to seize it, embrace this, play like there's no tomorrow, play like it's Game 7, and most importantly play as hard as we all individually can. And if we play smart as well, we should be in a good position to get that win tomorrow.

Q. Does not going back to Cleveland serve as the motivation?
KLAY THOMPSON: Oh, yeah, oh, yeah. It's a long flight. You want to reward your home fans and you obviously don't want to extend the series any longer than it has to be when you're in this position. So you just got to take it tomorrow, and it's on us. Can't make any excuses.

But that's definitely motivation. You don't want to have to fly across the country again. But there's plenty of more motivation besides that as well.

Q. (No microphone.)
KLAY THOMPSON: Well, I haven't really even thought about last year's Finals, just because we try to live in the moment right now and enjoy this. But Steph's still very competitive and I don't think anything's got him, sent him over the edge yet. So if he plays with that kind of fire, though, he'll be great tomorrow night.

Q. Were you starting to sense that through the first three games, Irving was getting really frustrated with the job that you were doing on him defensively?
KLAY THOMPSON: I don't think so. Maybe the first two, but his shots were falling in Game 3. I just think Game 4, the difference was Kyrie hitting seven threes. That's a big difference. If he's getting 39 points off two's, we can live with that. But when he's extending the floor and hitting those threes, it widens the whole floor for everybody.

So we can't do that again and hopefully limit that number to two or three instead of seven. That's too many.

Q. When you look at those numbers, do you see any way that Cleveland can repeat that effort and that's what it took to beat you guys?
KLAY THOMPSON: Yeah, if we're not ready to play. They're capable. They have done it throughout the whole Playoffs. But it's on us. They can definitely repeat it, so we got to do the job to stop them and make them uncomfortable. If they're comfortable, they can definitely do it again. But there should be no excuse in our home building playing at home.

FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports

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