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NBA EASTERN CONFERENCE FINALS: CAVALIERS vs CELTICS

May 19, 2018

Brad Stevens

Cleveland, Ohio: Game Three

Cavaliers - 116, Celtics - 86

Q. The mental approach to begin the game, they hit you in the mouth and you guys tried to come back, but you staggered and just kind of never got back up. What happened out there?
BRAD STEVENS: I mean, you just said it. You answered that question yourself. I think that they were great. We were clearly not the harder-playing, more connected team tonight. Cleveland was, and they deserve all the credit for that. I thought they played a great game. They came out and really moved it and were really tough, got into us defensively. I think a good example is we shot just a ton of hard pull-ups tonight.

Credit them for that. They deserve a lot of credit for that.

Q. Were you disappointed in the effort, just the overall effort of the game?
BRAD STEVENS: I don't want to take away from what Cleveland did. I think they deserve credit.

Q. It seemed like similar problems at the other end of the floor. Just defensively what happened to you guys?
BRAD STEVENS: Yeah, we weren't as good as the first two games. We didn't play as connected. We didn't play with as much ball pressure as we had in the previous two games, and they did. They really played very connected and got into us. Again, I don't want to take away from their performance by talking about us. They deserve all the credit, and they deserve to be talked about because they played great.

Q. With some of the high degree of difficulty passes that LeBron had tonight, is there anything defensively you guys can do differently to combat against that?
BRAD STEVENS: We can't give up dunks. Obviously some of the threes that he sprays out for are tremendous. There's only one person that can make passes going to his left like that in the league. But we've got to do a better job with all of our help and with all of our coverages.

Q. How surprised were you with George Hill's energy in the first quarter with an 11-point performance?
BRAD STEVENS: I've watched George Hill since he was 15 years old in Indianapolis. Not surprised at all.

Q. The difference for you guys between home undefeated and on-the-road struggling, can you put into words why there's such a big difference?
BRAD STEVENS: Well, we were great in the regular season on the road. We were one of the better teams in the regular season. I don't have an answer for you in the playoffs, but all that is a moot point for us. We have to play well. We have to focus on us and play well and play with more substance. And again, they took it to us. When you get in the playoffs, you get in these environments, not only are you playing in great environments, you're playing really good teams. When we've gone on the road, we've gone on with 2-0 leads in all three series. Two of those three times we didn't play as well as the other team. Point blank, they just outplayed us.

Q. First quarter seemed like you guys took a lot of quick shots and didn't really get into the flow of your offense. Why were you guys not able to get into that at all at the beginning? I mean, their defense, yes, but what else was it from your perspective?
BRAD STEVENS: I'll go through the film and go through it and figure out us. We talked about it -- I thought we took a lot of tough pull-ups in that quarter. But for now, clearly the team that played with more energy was Cleveland, and they guarded us with great togetherness.

Q. You used a lot of different guys in the first quarter, with Guerschon [Yabusele] early on, Greg Monroe. Were you just trying to find a combination that worked, shake things up?
BRAD STEVENS: Yeah we were clearly not as good as we had been. We were going to have to steal minutes with some guys. Right now, with the way that they're playing, we're going to need some other guys to be ready to go come Monday.

Q. You've talked about road games being a valuable experience for the young guys in the playoffs. When you have a result like tonight, what do you want guys like Terry Rozier, Jayson Tatum and Jaylen Brown take away from the experience tonight?
BRAD STEVENS: Well, to be honest with you, in my 11 years as a head coach, I probably haven't talked about road and home five times with our team. It's about how you play between the lines. Because I think if you start talking about that, then you find excuses in both places. We can't play like we played tonight no matter where we played. If we would have played in Boston like that, we would have gotten beat. The valuable lesson is that Cleveland outplayed us. We've got a game on Monday, and we've got to be ready to play better.

Q. You guys led the league in comeback wins this year, from 10 down, 15 down. You've had slow starts in the past. Was there anything at any point tonight, did you feel like there was a comeback there?
BRAD STEVENS: I felt like it was less likely based on how both teams were playing. Again, I thought that they played with tremendous connectivity. But I never doubt our guys. They're very resilient, and they always respond. This will be another challenge to respond to.

FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports

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