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NBA FINALS: WARRIORS VS. RAPTORS

May 29, 2019

Norman Powell

Toronto, Ontario - Practice Day

NORMAN POWELL: I like having Drake on the sideline. He's a great supporter. It's kind of funny how much his love and passion for the game and for the team really affected the opponents. Having the opposing coaches come out and talk about what he's doing and how he shouldn't be allowed to do all that, you can see that it's probably bothering them a little bit. But he's staying within the rules, so I don't see a problem with it. I love what he's doing.

Q. What is the line between enough and too much when it comes to heckling? Is there a fine line?
NORMAN POWELL: I don't think there's a fine line. As long as you're not being disrespectful or demeaning to anybody, it doesn't really matter. You say what you want; just don't disrespect or be mean about it. He's not demeaning or disrespecting anybody in any way.

Q. Do you prefer to have five or 10 days of rest?
NORMAN POWELL: Honestly, I don't know. I think rest is really important, but also I feel like rhythm and flow to the game is as well. Not saying that I would want less days; you want to wrap up a series as quickly as possible. They had 10 days and we had five. I think five days is enough time to rest and recuperate, get your mind and body right. Especially for the guys who are playing heavy minutes all series and playoffs long, I think five days is good. We'll still be able to have our game rhythm and flow.

Q. How do you prepare for the movement they play with?
NORMAN POWELL: Just being tied in. I think our best defense is when all five guys are able to guard everybody. We're able to switch. We're able to do a bunch of different coverages. We know that they like to move it. They have plays they like to move without the ball. So just being really tight and locked in in our foundational defense, and being locked into the guys off the ball is the most important thing. It's just going to be a full five-man job whoever is out there guarding all five of them.

Q. You get a lot of ticket requests for the NBA Finals. Can you put that in context and who is the most random person that's requested tickets?
NORMAN POWELL: I get a lot of random requests for tickets. I think our guy Kevin [DiPietro] does a great job of keeping that and not letting that be a distraction for us. I have a lot of family coming out and he does a great job of reaching out to my mom and getting the ticket requests ahead of time so I don't have to worry about it during the games. He does that for everybody on the team. But the most random is probably messages on Instagram.

Q. What's going to be the key to getting off to a good start and getting this first win?
NORMAN POWELL: Just coming out with a lot of energy and really tying into what the game plan is. They like to get out in transition and they shoot a lot of threes. I think for us we have to really focus on getting our defense set, limiting them to one shot and being able to take care of the ball and not give them easy looks in transition. ot turning the ball over, taking care of it, trying to get a shot up on every possession to be able to give ourselves the best chance to get our defense back.

Just the energy. If you need a motivation to come out and play hard and play with passion and energy in the NBA Finals, you're in the wrong field.

Q. Serge was saying you have to respect your opponent but you can't be caught in awe of your opponent. You guys are here to win this thing.
NORMAN POWELL: Exactly. We played against them before. They're not a team that we haven't seen or faced. We know their guys. We know them pretty well. Serge played with Kevin Durant. We played against Steph and them since we have been in the league. We know what they do. We know how they play. We know who they are.

At the same time, we are here for a reason. You have to believe in yourself and you have to go out there and leave it on the line. Doesn't matter who you're going against, as long as you're playing basketball and leaving it all out there. You have to respect them, but you still have to go out and play.

FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports

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