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NBA FINALS: CAVALIERS vs WARRIORS

June 2, 2018

Stephen Curry

Oakland, California: Practice Day

Q. Some losses are said to be devastating, crushing, you name the adjectives. Are some losses more difficult to bounce back from in your opinion over the course of your career?
STEPHEN CURRY: Yeah. The situation definitely matters how the game went and how quickly you can turn the page. But most guys, when they get to this level, when you show up to that next game and that next game day and you're able to kind of look at what's ahead, that transition happens pretty naturally.

But sometimes you lose a little sleep the night after tough losses. It's just kind of part of the game, how bad you want it and how close you can get. But it's also easy to turn the page when you get back into that environment.

Q. Who do you lean on in this situation, if you go through a tough loss? Who do you turn to?
STEPHEN CURRY: Win or loss, I try to keep things outside of the arena, outside of what I do here in my job, in the right perspective. So with my family, things that you do outside of basketball, I try to keep the same and enjoy them as much whether it's a win or a loss. Got to have the right perspective through all this craziness, for sure.

Q. A lot of times in Game 1 LeBron got the switches he wanted and you had to take him repeatedly. Can you just describe how difficult that was? And do you think you guys have to do something different this time around to try to control him? Draymond Green talked about playing with more force.
STEPHEN CURRY: I think that was the biggest takeaway watching the film in Game 1 is not only did he have an amazing game and scored 51, but there wasn't much resistance in that first half with our switches, with our help-side defense, picking him up with force and kind of assertiveness on the defensive end.

Whether he scores or not, he's still a great player. But we've got to be a little bit more aggressive. And that doesn't mean changing our game plan at all. It just means doing things a little bit faster, a little bit more physical, and just trying to make not just him but everybody else more uncomfortable out there on the floor to start the game. I think we can do that.

Q. If I could follow up, you still had a great offensive game. Could you just describe the difficulty of what you did, trying to stay with him on one end and keep pace on the scoring on the other end?
STEPHEN CURRY: For seven games last series, that's what I had to do. So it's kind of a constant theme and pattern that I'm pretty much used to. It's not going to slow me down at all. If you want to try to pick on me on defense, I'm going to hold my own and I'm going to come right back at you. That's kind of par for the course right there. Got my golf reference in, nice.

Q. Did you feel that Game 1 was going to turn out that way? Do you like the competitive rivalry that has been building up throughout The Finals, or after playing four consecutive, does it make it boring?
STEPHEN CURRY: Definitely not boring at all. We're playing for a championship. This is the most fun you have playing in the game of basketball. Playing the same team four times, I think there are a lot of consistencies that you can kind of fall back on and experience. But when you get here on this stage, everything is just fresh. It's new. It's exciting. We're now three wins away from winning another championship. That's an amazing feeling. We want to enjoy every single moment of this, for sure.

Q. We should have asked Steve Kerr this and we didn't, but from your interactions with him, how is Klay (Thompson) today?
STEPHEN CURRY: From what I saw, he is looking pretty good. Pretty happy. Pretty upbeat. He obviously didn't do much on the floor, but doesn't really need to. Only worry about 5 o'clock tomorrow. So hopefully he'll get some more treatment, recovery and keep making progress. If I was betting, I'd say Klay was playing just based on who he is and his attitude today, for sure.

Q. When Kevin Durant has a game like he did in Game 1, do you need to say anything afterward? Or do you just kind of let him figure it out on his own? And are you confident that he'll get back into a rhythm for Game 2?
STEPHEN CURRY: We're all victims of our expectations that we've set. I mean, the fact that they're saying K.D. had a bad game is kind of funny, just with what you expect from him every single night.

But we are all in this together. There's not much anyone has to go over and have an intervention type of situation or say anything besides, hey, let's go get Game 2, and everybody needs to show up and play at our best.

That's been the communication around the whole team these last two days. Watching film, everybody is engaged, calling stuff out. I like that type of vibe, when everybody is not complacent. We know we won Game 1 by the skin of our teeth. Now we've got to go play better, take control of the series. And K.D. is going to have a huge part in that, for sure.

Q. This is the fourth time you've seen these guys, and obviously the end of Game 1 there was Tristan and Draymond, and you and LeBron had a couple words for each other. But it doesn't look like there's a lot of hatred here. How are you able to compete for the same thing so many times but still be competitive without really crossing the line?
STEPHEN CURRY: This is just basketball. Part of the game, part of that competitive environment when somebody is in your way of holding the trophy, there is going to be a little animosity and a little edginess, if you will.

But at the end of the day, it's basketball. We're playing for 48 minutes to win a game. If you can leave it out there on the floor and not take anything too personally -- we're not holding hands and singing songs as friends. We're enjoying the competitive environment. I think that's the consistent thing between our two teams.

Obviously we see each other twice a year during the regular season and then you wait until June. So there is not a lot of face-to-face stuff throughout the season. Maybe that has something to do with it. But right now it's just about winning a championship. You don't want to let anything distract us from that on the floor.

Q. You've spoken often about being part of the transformation of this franchise, from losing into contending every year and how hard it is to do it. How much pride do you take in that? What dynasties do you most appreciate who have done it for so long and been able to win?
STEPHEN CURRY: The second question, I don't know. As a fan of the NBA, you could go down the list of the teams that won multiple years and just dominated the league for stretches of time. But what we've been able to do here -- from my rookie year winning 23 games I think it was; to 28; to the lockout year winning 20-something; and then making the playoffs and then kind of taking a small step every year until 2015, winning our first championship -- it is a sense of pride around that.

Being the elder statesman here and seeing what has all gone into being on this stage every single year -- when it comes to the guys that I get to suit up with every single night, from Bob Myers down to the coaching staff to the ownership, it's just a transformation that I got to see firsthand and all the details that went into it.

So at some point, when this is all said and done, I hope to kind of just sit back and really truly appreciate, from start to finish, all that went into it. But there is an awareness of where we were to where we are. And I appreciate it. That's why I think when I get to this stage it's always like it's brand new because of how hard it was to get here in the first place.

FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports

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