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NBA WESTERN CONFERENCE FINALS: WARRIORS vs ROCKETSMay 25, 2018James HardenOakland, California: Practice Day JAMES HARDEN: Business as usual. Guys got to step up and make plays. Obviously, Chris [Paul] has been playing extremely well. Hopefully, he'll have a speedy recovery, which I know will happen. There have been opportunities all year long for guys to step up and take advantage of an unbelievable opportunity. Q. What is the luxury of having Eric Gordon who can step right in? JAMES HARDEN: Eric has been playing well. Whether it's Luc [Mbah a Moute] or Joe [Johnson] or Ryan [Anderson] or whoever the coaches call, they've got to be ready to come in and play some big minutes. Q. After how y'all have responded to adversity all year long, how confident are you that you're going to be able to absorb this blow? JAMES HARDEN: We're extremely confident, as usual, from top to bottom. Like I said, this is nothing new to us. Whether it's myself or Chris or anybody else who has sat out a few games, guys have stepped in and contributed very well. So it's no different. Q. People are saying there is more pressure on you because of this. But do you see it more as it's the whole team has to step up? JAMES HARDEN: Pressure for what? It's Game 6 of the Western Conference Finals. There is pressure on everybody. Q. Knowing what Chris has devoted to his career and throughout the season, for this to happen to him now? JAMES HARDEN: It's tough. It's tough. We don't want to just be down on it. We don't want to come and be pouting around. We want to keep our same swagger, our same positive energy. We try to feed that off to him as well: Be happy, be ready; get this thing right, get this thing going and be back in no time. Q. So it kind of serves as a rallying cry? JAMES HARDEN: Yeah, we're not here to be down and moping around and sad. Q. We see Chris walking in here smiling. JAMES HARDEN: Yeah, that's what it's about. I was at his spot until like 2:30 in the morning, just talking, chopping it up, laughing and talking about life. Q. On the team's defense: JAMES HARDEN: Defensively we've been engaged, getting stops and just communicating and talking and whatnot. But we've got to take it to another level. We watched film and we gave them a lot of opportunities, open threes, not communicating on switches and things like that. So we have to be that much better in a close-out game. Q. What do you think will be the biggest key to being able to go to Oracle and get another one? JAMES HARDEN: The same thing we've been doing. Not allowing them to get buckets in transition, and limiting them to one shot. Then offensively, executing, getting up our shots and being confident. Q. P.J. [Tucker] was talking about that it's kind of fun to see this team win these games defensively. Most people think this group has that offensive mindset. But how is that for you to see these teams win these games like this? JAMES HARDEN: It's no surprise to me or the rest of the guys, because we've been doing it all year long. The world thinks we're just an offensive team because our system -- we shoot a lot of threes and whatnot. But defensively, we can get after it too. We can score 130 or win a game scoring 90 points. And that is the beauty of this team. Q. How excited are you to be at the place you're at and the opportunity to be one game away from The Finals? JAMES HARDEN: It's an opportunity that a lot of people never had and probably won't ever have. It's our job to go out there and have fun with it and do the same thing we've been doing. We want to take advantage of it. FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports   |
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