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NBA EASTERN CONFERENCE FINALS: RAPTORS VS. BUCKS

May 25, 2019

Nick Nurse

Toronto, Ontario - Postgame 6, Canada

Raptors - 100, Bucks - 94.

Q. Nick, can you just speak to your team's toughness mentally? There were many times a lesser team would have folded tonight. You talked about Kawhi's even-keeledness. Does that carry over in those circumstances, as well?
NICK NURSE: Yeah, I talk about his even-keeledness and talk about him making huge plays. Tonight he seemed to inspire us with some monster rebounds, just out of nowhere when we had either a bad possession or even a good possession that didn't go in. He'd fly in there. I thought he made some game-winning rebounds, and that has a lot to do with it, too.

You were at the game. It wasn't going that well, right? It seemed like a bit of a frustrating night. I think we got a little frustrated in the first half, but we kind of regrouped at halftime and talked about let's just keep playing, man. Nobody is giving us this thing; we've got to go take it ourselves. I thought we did a really good job of that in the second half, even, again, going down 15 or whatever we did. Just kept on playing.

Q. Kawhi hit a three, got a favorable bounce with like three minutes left. He had missed his first seven threes. Did you call that in the timeout, and if so, what made you confident that the next one would go in?
NICK NURSE: No, you know what, he was -- well, I probably better not say it. I thought he had a couple really good looks. He had a couple in and out, and even that last one was down and in and spun back out, which would have been good. But he's on line and he's got great mechanics and backspin and all that stuff. So we were fortunate. It was a bounce of the ball, and we needed a bounce of the ball. Didn't seem like we were getting many, especially to start the game. Man, I was like, oh, my goodness, all these things are rolling out. Not one of those nights tonight.

Q. If I go back through the last couple series, we've seen all through the regular season, offense came easy. You've been winning with defense, and not just defense that we saw early, you're like crushing defense, holding top-scoring teams to 94 points. What's changed with the Raptors from the regular season to today?
NICK NURSE: Well, we're playing a lot harder. It took one punch in the gut from the Orlando Magic to understand we'd better start playing a lot harder. I think we came out in Game 2 and you saw a totally different basketball team that started using their abilities to the best of their ability. That's really the difference.

Now, listen, we've learned and grown as well. Our communication, scheme, switching, blitzing. Our rotations, contesting shots, all those things have been growing here since the start of the playoffs. The other thing is there are some moments, like stretches, we call them consecutive stops, and there are some stretches where it's darned hard to complete a pass against us. That wears into a team after a while when you're up into them and you're denying and everybody is just that connected and playing that hard. Effort is really the answer to your question.

Q. You kind of touched on that there, but why is this journey or what about this journey through 18 games has taught you about your team, and what do you think your team has learned about itself given how new it was really?
NICK NURSE: Yeah, we've learned a lot. You'll know the stats, but I think we only had something like, I don't know, 81 minutes or 121 minutes or something with like our guys, like with our starting lineup. 160. Still not very many, right. I can't do the math. It's less than four games.

Anyway, so we did have some growth to discover. I said this after the last series, I was worried that we drew Orlando because I thought they were the hottest and best team of the five through eight seeds. But I also knew that if we could go play and beat a team that defended well and executed well, that we would grow and get better. And then Philly was really good, like super talented, unbelievably talented, and that was a series that we had to go through some really highs and some really lows. Again, we learned a little bit more about staying even-keeled. We get our butts kicked really badly in Game 3 and it was all over in a lot of people's mind. We just kind of said, you know what, every time we've done this all season long, we've bounced back the next night. And we did. Again, we had to really fight. They were great.

Listen, this is a really good team here. To beat this team four times in a row to me is almost mind-boggling. This team is super deep, very well-coached, talent, a superstar that causes all kinds of problems. I'm more proud that we just kept growing and kept hanging in there and kind of always believed.

Q. Everyone talked about Fred's kid being born on Monday. You had a kid born on Monday, too. Yet you've like kept this emotional composure all week long. Could you pull back the curtain a little bit and put me in your shoes over the past week of what this has been like for your family and frankly for the city?
NICK NURSE: I think that the biggest thing is if you try to limit the distractions. Certainly it wasn't a distraction. It was a great moment for me. But again, the rest of the distractions, like I just try to focus in and shut my door and turn my phone off and do the work to prepare and get the guys prepared and really manage their rest and energy, to reenergize them in between each game. We kind of kept adding to our game plan each and every night with somebody else we were going to try to shake up or go after a little bit, and that was good.

I told the team before the game, I said, I don't know a lot, but I know you guys have earned every bit of being in this game on your home floor. They have been diligent, they've been smart, they've been really tough. And that's it.

Q. Last offseason Masai makes a string of decisions that seismically change this team, changing a coach, trading a star. How did you guys over the course of this year kind of manage these big sort of earthquake-type situations? And obviously if you could reflect on kind of that part of your job this season and getting to this point.
NICK NURSE: I think that it was always kind of the long play or the long vision in mind. I think I was always telling them that what I was most concerned with starting out the season was that we just tried to come together and tried to learn on a daily basis as best we could, that we weren't going to get caught up in a really bad preseason performance or even a really bad regular-season performance and just try to bounce back and play a little better and we weren't going to go bonkers about winning a game, a big game on the road, whatever, at OKC or beating a good team on the road.

So we just were trying to play the long -- even with Kawhi, we wanted to ease him back in. We wanted to get to know him. We didn't want to go crazy trying to worry too much about the regular-season record. We wanted to play well, and we wanted a high seed and we wanted home court, but we didn't ever make winning a set number of games or winning in general a priority. It was just, let's keep figuring ourselves out and let's just keep trying to get better and learn.

Q. What was special about Kyle Lowry's performance in this series, and what does it mean to you having been here for a while to see him succeed and sort of break through on this level?
NICK NURSE: I think that the things he always does -- I always say this, like his natural instincts are to be a leader out there, and he shows it. He does it with his IQ and his great knowledge of the game. He shows it with tremendous toughness as well. That's his other natural characteristic. He's blocking out guys twice his size. He's taking charges every game. He's just going to fight to win. He's a hell of a competitor, and that rubs off on guys. I think to me, again, he kept very level-headed. I think he kept very confident at all times as well, and I think that helped our team.

Q. I was thinking earlier tonight, these are not your older brothers' Raptors, the ones that would always lose in the conference final to LeBron James. Other than the obvious, what is it about this organization and about this group that got them over the hump? And secondly, what happens to Kawhi Leonard when the stage gets this big and the lights get this bright?
NICK NURSE: I think first of all, to accomplish what we've done, winning the Eastern Conference, you've got to really truly believe you can do it. That was kind of my message from Day One of training camp: We've got a good team here, we've got good players, we've got depth, we've got a lot of things. We've got to understand that there are a lot of good teams in the East, but we're right up there. I think that belief started things, and I think we always kind of thought that. So that's the starting point.

And Kawhi is like -- I don't know how many more good things I can say about him. He's just so good. And again, I'm seeing a level of competitive greatness out of him. It's just his willing us to win and him grabbing those rebounds and willing those shots in almost it seems like and going down and locking up somebody and taking the ball from them. It's what it is; it's great competitive desire.

Q. You're obviously well aware of what Golden State has been able to do the last few years in this league. What kind of challenge do they represent, and how much do you relish the challenge of going against a team with that kind of pedigree?
NICK NURSE: They're one of the greatest teams in history. I think, what is this, five straight Finals for them? There's not a whole lot of teams that have done that. So that's about all you need to say right there. I think they've got certainly some big-time star power, a number of star players. I think they've got some great, athletic, energetic role guys and bench guys. And obviously they've got an experienced coach who's won a lot, not only as a coach but as a player.

So it will be a tall task, but we'll try to figure it out.

FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports

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