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NBA FINALS: WARRIORS VS. RAPTORS

May 31, 2019

Steve Kerr

Toronto, Ontario - Practice Day

Q. Draymond was just reiterating the point he made last night that he felt like the defense started with him. What's your perspective on what you need from him moving forward as well as the rest of the team defensively?
STEVE KERR: What was my perspective about what?

Q. On what you need to see from Draymond moving forward defensively and the rest of the team.
STEVE KERR: It's a team effort and nothing has changed from last night. I don't know, maybe we have another media session scheduled for five o'clock this evening and I'll say the same thing, which is that transition defense is where it starts, and we were just careless getting back.

Draymond is always going to take the burden on his shoulders, and I respect that about him. But it's a team effort, five-man group. And if your transition defense is bad, then there's not a whole lot you can do because you're talking about the best players in the world coming downhill in a fast game, five-on-four or four-on-three. It's just too easy to score for any team, but especially a team like Toronto that's in The Finals.

Q. Maybe the first seminal moment in the history of the Raptors was a game in which you played in 25 years ago. The Bulls came into Toronto, huge sellout at SkyDome. What do you remember from that night and that day?
STEVE KERR: I remember missing the game-winning shot at the buzzer (laughter).

That's true. But it's also hard for me to think about that being a seminal moment. I think that Raptors team won, I don't know, 15 or 20 games, but it was a big game for the fans and you could feel the energy. That was at the Dome, if I'm not mistaken. So what I remember back then was just coming up here and how intense and passionate the fans were. They were so excited to have the NBA, so maybe that's what you're referring to in terms of the first real feeling of being part of the league, upsetting the Bulls, all that stuff.

So, yeah, I remember that game well.

Q. Obviously Kevin's health is paramount. You don't want him to re-injure it. But is there any assessment of where the series is and how that balances, if he can't re-injure it, if it's just a matter of what kind of shape he's in, maybe you think about getting him in faster? Is that part of the balance at all?
STEVE KERR: No, it's not my thinking. It's not our thinking. The thinking is when he's ready to play, he'll play. It's not like this is a sore ankle or his knee is sore, whatever, and you can play through it. This is a tricky one. If you re-injure the calf, then that's it and then he's done for the series. So when he's ready to play, he'll play. That's our approach.

Q. Could you foresee him playing in a limited role with very little spots here and there?
STEVE KERR: I don't see that. When he's ready to play, we're going to play him. Maybe it will be a minutes issue based on his conditioning for not having played in a month or whatever it is, but we'll just have to wait and see. Once he's ready to play he'll play, and then Rick (Celebrini) and I will discuss what a plan would be in terms of how many minutes and all that stuff.

Q. More Kevin, how has he responded to those couple of days of the on-court drills? And you guys aren't having a real practice today, right?
STEVE KERR: Right.

Q. And is Kevin sort of maybe missed more against a team like the Raptors with their great forwards than opposed to maybe Portland?
STEVE KERR: He's done well with his rehab the last couple of days. He's continuing to ramp stuff up. And I'm just not going to answer any questions about do we miss him against this team or that team or whatever. Because it's just a sound bite and it doesn't matter. The only thing that matters is we have to win the game with what we have, and then when he comes back we'll put him out there. Nothing else matters.

Q. You've talked about it this week and in the past how much you love this city, the NBA franchise here. What do you think the atmosphere was like yesterday for the first Finals game in franchise history? And how do you guys think you responded to the energy in the building and the energy from them?
STEVE KERR: It was a great, great atmosphere. The national anthem was one of the coolest things I've ever been a part of. Hearing the crowd sink along to O Canada, it was beautiful. And I thought our guys responded well. We're used to playing on the road, hostile environments, all that. I don't think we played our "A" game; I think that's obvious. I think we did some good things and there are a lot of areas we need to improve. But the crowd will never have anything to do with that with this team. We're going to play our game.

It's fun. Frankly, it's fun to be in these environments, to be challenged, to be threatened, especially because the Canadian fans are so nice that even when they're harassing us they do it in a very polite manner (laughter).

Q. Have you guys made a final decision for Kevin's status for Sunday night?
STEVE KERR: Kevin is not going to play Sunday. Yeah. I guess we have been sort of holding out hope, but I might as well just say it now. He's not practicing today. We'll have a practice tomorrow. But he's still progressing. It's near impossible for him to play on Sunday.

Q. Why did you guys make the decision to have him travel here if he wasn't going to play?
STEVE KERR: Because our training staff is here and we need him with our training staff, and we also need our training staff for the rest of our players. Kevin also wanted to be with the guys.

Q. At various points during this run the last five years, the Memphis series, maybe the Houston series last year, you guys have been up against it and you responded and got through. What have you seen from your guys at those particular moments and what does knowing that they have done it before do for you as a coach going forward in a series like this?
STEVE KERR: The experience helps. Winning multiple championships helps because you have seen it all. There's also just the knowledge that you've been here before. You've been down. We have been up 3-1 and lost a series. We have been down 3-1 and won a series. Everything in between. So nothing is going to catch these guys off guard, and they are very accustomed to the rhythm and tone of a seven-game series and how long it takes, how many twists and turns there are. And you know that as soon as you lose a game, it will be on the crawl that now we only have a 19.7 percent chance of winning the series. Then if we win tomorrow we'll have a 42.7 chance of not losing the series.

This stuff is what it is. You lose a game, you come back and you try to win. And the team we're playing knows that better than anybody. They were down 2-0 and came back and won four straight (in the Eastern Conference Finals). So these things change quickly, but you have to be prepared for everything. You have to learn from your mistakes. You have to keep fighting. It's actually pretty simple. The execution of it is not simple, but when you watch it on tape, okay, this is what we have to do, and then are we good enough to do it? That's what make it's fun. You get to test yourself.

Q. When you got them in the half court, what was your impression of your guys' job in that half-court defense and particularly as it related to getting the ball out of Kawhi Leonard's hands?
STEVE KERR: I thought we did a pretty good job in the half court. There were some plays where we didn't rotate all the way through. The two Gasol threes early in the game stood out where we just kind of stopped; can't do that. That's regular-season basketball. Playoff basketball, you have to make every rotation until the shot clock goes out, until you get the rebound.

So there were plenty of mistakes, but also plenty of good things that we did. If you just boil it down to half-court stuff, I walk away from that game feeling fine. It was, as I said many times, transition that opened up the game and really hurt us.

Q. Is there an update on Andre?
STEVE KERR: Andre had an MRI this morning and seems to be doing well. I haven't heard the results yet, but I talked to him and he said he felt pretty good.

Q. Draymond was discussing the speed of the Raptors in transition. He said the game was a lot faster than it looks even when you watch it. So I was wondering if the speed of the Raptors reminds you of any other playoff series that the Warriors have been a part of?
STEVE KERR: I'm not sure if it reminds me of any of our series, but they remind me of us in a lot of ways. Draymond pushes the ball in transition; Siakam pushes the ball in transition. They have a lot of guys who can make plays with the ball, just like we do. Sometimes they play two point guards with Lowry and VanVleet, and sometimes we do the same with Steph and Shaun or Steph and Andre or all three of them.

When you've got a team that can push the ball from a lot of different positions, make plays from a lot of different positions and plays fast, you've got to be vigilant every possession.

So yeah, if anything, they remind me of us.

Q. Andre has acknowledged in the past that when KD is out, he feels more of a need to provide some offense. Last night he had some open looks, wasn't able to get anything going down really. In your mind, how important is it that he bring you something on the offensive end in terms of scoring under these conditions, against this particular team? And how hard is it to change his game enough to be able to do that, add that function to it?
STEVE KERR: I think we scored enough points last night. Andre didn't have his best game, obviously, shooting the ball. But Jonas made a couple threes. Alfonzo made a couple. As long as we're getting some scoring from our secondary scorers, then we're in good shape. It doesn't matter if it comes from Andre or Quinn or Jonas or a combination of the above. I thought we got enough scoring. And every game's going to change. I thought they hit some really tough shots last night at the end of shot clocks, so they made the shots and they deserved it.

But I get it. To me, it doesn't come down to how many shots Andre makes. It comes down to defense and getting stops. That's what the playoffs are about. We didn't get enough stops.

THE MODERATOR: Thank you, Steve.

STEVE KERR: Thanks.

FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports

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