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NBA EASTERN CONFERENCE FINALS: CAVALIERS vs CELTICS

May 21, 2018

Brad Stevens

Cleveland, Ohio: Game Four

Cavaliers - 111, Celtics - 102

Q. Without getting yourself fined, what did you think about the officiating tonight?
BRAD STEVENS: Never -- you won't hear me complain about officials. They have a really hard job, and they do a tremendous job night in, night out. I've got nothing bad to say. Nothing but good things.

Q. Were you playing a variation of a zone --
BRAD STEVENS: No.

Q. Throughout parts of this game?
BRAD STEVENS: No, not once.

Q. When you guys cut it to eight late in the third and then the Cavs responded with a 7-2 run, did you feel like that was a momentum shift heading into the fourth?
BRAD STEVENS: I mean, we cut it back to eight in the fourth, too. It's a long game. Maybe this is the point in time you're referring to, the very end of the third quarter was not good. The end of the first, end of the third were two that really stand out as not good. The rest of the game, obviously I thought we had some shots we'd like to have back. We had a couple possessions where we had multiple drive-and-kicks, the defense was broken down and we just didn't convert. But the end of the first, end of the third, those were tough on us.

Q. LeBron's ability to kind of dissect what you're doing out there in real time, how much more difficult does that make it for you to establish a defensive identity?
BRAD STEVENS: I thought we defended a lot better in the second half. We have to have five guys playing all-out and really honed in defensively. In the first half, I didn't think we were as honed in. I thought we were playing hard, but I didn't think we were as honed in. The second half we were much better.

But yeah, he's the best in the game at evaluating the court and figuring out what he wants and where he wants it. The thing about it is that you just have to battle. You just have to make it as hard as possible, because he's going to find a matchup that he ultimately wants. You have to, again, not let the other guys go off, which we did again a little bit, and then make sure you make it as tough on him as possible.

Q. He seemed to be looking for that Terry Rozier switch pretty often in this one. How do you keep him from getting that moving forward?
BRAD STEVENS: Well, he's going to go after whoever he wants to go after. But at the end of the day, we've gone through it a lot. I think one of the things that sometimes we all get consumed with is the points he scores on that switch. If it's eight but it keeps you from rotating and you can still guard the three-point line, then sometimes you just have to pick your poison.

It's obviously been more effective to switch than not, but at times you have to make that up and change that up, just by the numbers. When you go back and re-watch the game, you're always thinking about how you're going to adjust to different coverages. It always ends up transition, offensive rebounds and good shots. We've got to take care of those areas first. Then the coverages will be mixed up, but ultimately good players make plays.

Q. They had 17 threes on you last game, only eight, I think, tonight. Were you happy with the way your guys defended the three-pointer tonight?
BRAD STEVENS: There were a couple that [Kyle] Korver got that were too open, including one he missed there when we were coming back. We were a little bit better than the other night, but I don't know how we could be much worse than the other night.

Q. As far as the pace, you guys seemed to control the pace after the first quarter. Was that an emphasis going in --
BRAD STEVENS: I just want to take great shots. I don't care if they come early, late. We need to take great shots. We did that some, but not as much as we need to.

Q. What's the messaging you give your players going into Game 5?
BRAD STEVENS: It's the best two out of three to go to the NBA Finals. Doesn't get better than that.

Ultimately, anybody that didn't think this was going to be tough -- I mean, everything is tough. In this deal, it's a blast to have to grit your teeth, get up off the mat and go after it again. That's part of it. That's part of what makes these guys on both sides special. It's part of what makes the Western Conference teams special. They're able to do it. They're able to block out everything that doesn't matter and go compete. That's what we'll go do.

Q. I know you feel like you played worse in Game 3 in general, but did it feel like there was more sort of glaring mental mistakes tonight than you are accustomed to or more than you guys can overcome?
BRAD STEVENS: I think obviously we've got to play better than we did. I'll go through film and we'll re-look at it and determine the main reasons why we were where we were, but certainly we didn't play a perfect game.

Q. It seemed like you had several opportunities to get back in and make it tighter. Was there any common thread that prevented that?
BRAD STEVENS: When we had it to eight, I thought we missed a couple of really good opportunities on offense that were really good shots. Then I thought we did try to hit home runs on some other shots as we were coming back. Those will catch up with you.

Q. It seems to be a theme that the team that has one really bad quarter loses. After the first quarter, are you generally pleased with how your team performed, especially going into Game 5, as a correctable?
BRAD STEVENS: I was generally pleased with how we performed the first five minutes of the game. It was just the end of the first quarter. And then the end of the third. We're going to have moments where we're up and down. These guys are really good. They're hard to play. Ty [Lue] does a great job putting them in great positions. This is a really good basketball team. And so we're not going to play perfect, and we're going to have our moments. But we can't have those swoons that we have at the end of each of those quarters.

FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports

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