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NBA FINALS: WARRIORS VS. RAPTORS

June 1, 2019

Steve Kerr

Toronto, Ontario - Practice Day

Q. You guys have so many weapons in your arsenal, but one of the intangible weapons that you have is just tremendous confidence on the part of individuals on that team. How does that confidence express itself? What does it look like to you and how does it play out when you're down in a series like this?
STEVE KERR: I think any team that has been through the experiences that we have and that has won championships has to earn that confidence. I think players are naturally pretty confident at this level. Star players, like we have, they have all got confidence. But what the real confidence is is when you've been through everything and you've seen everything -- you've won, you've lost, you've experienced every high, every low, then you know what this is about and you can dig into your reserve of experience to remember what's necessary, which is really you just keep going back to the basics.

It sounds boring, but transition defense, boxing out. Football coaches just say blocking and tackling. It's the same concept, but your ability to do that under pressure, when you're in The Finals or in a big series, whatever, and everybody's asking you a million questions, it's can you focus on blocking and tackling? That's what it comes down to.

To me, confidence is not just confidence in your shot. It's confidence in your ability to execute all the details that go into winning a game.

Q. I'm not sure if you had seen yesterday, the Clippers were fined because Doc Rivers made some comments on a TV show about Kawhi. I think you're probably going to agree more than anyone just based on how long your seasons are, do you find yourself worrying about things you say now more than you used to? And I guess on the other side of that, you guys have your own free agents. Do you worry about what other people are saying about your players?
STEVE KERR: I got fined when I was the GM of Phoenix for making a joke on The Dan Patrick Show. I think he asked me if we were interested in LeBron when LeBron was a free agent back in whatever it was that he went to Miami. I said if he's willing to take minimum, we would take him. Dan laughed. And I wrote a $10,000 check the next day. So I learned my lesson. I don't comment about any other players.

Q. The skill of relocating as shooters, there's no one in the world that gets paid more attention to than Steph, probably Klay is second, and yet somehow they're able to squeeze themselves open. What goes into that?
STEVE KERR: I think it's a team-wide effort. You have guys who are willing to screen for them, who recognize those situations, where it doesn't have to be a play call. You don't have to say, all right, we're running whatever, four-out. You recognize situations where you can just set a screen for a guy. We got a lot of smart basketball players, guys who can make passes, who can set screens.

And then I've said this many times about Steph: He's very unique in that he can beat you on the ball or off the ball. Most players are kind of one or the other. But he's a guy who is equally as dangerous in a ball screen with the ball or coming off a pin-down like Reggie Miller, somebody like that. That's what makes him so dangerous.

Q. I guess he must be just good at reading the play, like where to find that next little seam as it's breaking down?
STEVE KERR: Yup, it's just seeing the floor. Again, going back to the number of playmakers that we have been blessed with over the years, that's what a lot of opposing coaches have told me over the last few years: What has made us difficult to guard is not just that we have Steph and Klay shooting or KD; it's guys like Andre and Draymond and Shaun Livingston and Bogut and David Lee a few years ago and DeMarcus now. We have always been blessed with a lot of passers and playmakers.

Q. For those of who have never done it and never will do it, what is the challenge as a coach to get on this stage and have to try to figure out how to get a player like Boogie back into the mix while not completely disrupting your rotation and with the knowledge, of course, that he's not fully a hundred percent?
STEVE KERR: You watch a lot of film and you discuss it as a staff. You discuss it with the players. And you try to find the right balance. So the other night I thought that he played well. I thought we had some really good moments. I thought one of the reasons Jonas Jerebko made a couple threes and Quinn Cook got open for a three was because of DeMarcus' attention that he drew from the defense.

He made a couple steals. He did some good things. That was a good first step. So we have to figure out now as a staff, as a team, where does that leave us? Do we increase the minutes? Do we change the role at all? Those are all things we have been discussing.

Q. As a quick follow-up, I think you were asked this and I apologize, but he came out Thursday okay? There's no pain, no problem?
STEVE KERR: Yeah, he's fine. He's fine.

Q. After the game, you said, "I don't know if we were familiar enough with this Raptors team at full strength." After a couple of days, how confident or how do you feel now about the X's and O's and the players' knowledge of what this team is about?
STEVE KERR: It's great to have the videotape. That's where you can really learn. We had a good film session yesterday. We'll have another one today. I think a team like this that pushes the ball relentlessly, it's not enough to just say, hey, guys, transition defense is important. I think you have to feel it, and we felt it the other night. They ran the ball right past us several times. As I said the other night, our transition defense was very poor and that has to improve.

Q. How did the addition of Marc Gasol change the way the Raptors can play?
STEVE KERR: I think it gives them another passer, another playmaker. I made the comment yesterday that I feel like our teams are pretty similar. Siakam reminds me a lot of Draymond the way he pushes the ball, the way he play-makes. We have had a lot of passing centers - Bogut and DeMarcus among them. Marc is unique because he can make the three-point shot, but he's a really good secondary playmaker. So when the ball is swung to him, a really good passer, he can move the ball along and generate offense out of any traps or any type of defensive pressure. He's a very good player.

Q. It seems to me still even after all these years a little bit of a reluctant three-point shooter, like even in that game, maybe he was some of those dare shots you were talking about.
STEVE KERR: I don't think he's been a three-point shooter for that long.

Q. No, he hasn't.
STEVE KERR: Yeah, maybe a couple years. I remember maybe two seasons ago it seemed like in Memphis he started shooting corner threes and they were running specific play sets for him, where he would stand in the corner and the opposing team's big would automatically go help in the paint and he would shoot a wide-open corner three. But like so many players these days, he's worked at it. So now he's shooting the above-the-break three.

He's a guy who can take his time, and he does take his time, but he can do it because he's a five man. So he's standing out there above the break and most defensive fives are going to be in the paint. That's what they have been taught their whole lives.

But that was not the strategy the other night, to let him stand there for six seconds. So we would like to be a little sharper with that.

Q. What did you think of Jordan Bell's game in Game 1, and how much do you expect his minutes to be tied to specific matchups on the floor moving forward?
STEVE KERR: I thought Jordan did a good job. One of the reasons we started him was because of his speed, knowing we were coming in with a 10-day break playing on the road against a fast team. I liked his athleticism. He did some really nice things. Every game is going to be different. Pretty much every game this postseason has been different at the center position, based on what we have needed. The one constant is Looney, who is going to play his 28, 30 minutes one way or the other. What we're always trying to do is mix and match and find matchups and fill in those gaps with the right combinations that can help us win.

So Jordan did a nice job the other night, but so did DeMarcus. I think Bogut is available. Bogut could make an impact. Looney, as I said, is kind of our mainstay, despite the fact that he doesn't start. So we have a lot of options at that spot.

Q. Nick was in here earlier saying there was one approach you guys were using on Kawhi that he hadn't seen before or seen much. You've game-planned against LeBron for a bunch and now Kawhi. Do you go into it thinking you can surprise them, show something new? Or is it just a matter of giving them a volume of looks that they really have to slow down their thought process?
STEVE KERR: I think with great players like Kawhi or LeBron or Kevin Durant or whoever, it's the old clichÃ©: You can't just do the same thing over and over again. But in this case the clichÃ© is true: You can't give a guy the same look every time. So you just try to mix it up and keep them off balance the best you can.

I thought we did a decent job overall on Kawhi. He didn't have his best game. But, again, transition and other areas of our defensive game were really lacking and we have to clean up. We're under no illusion that we're going to stop Kawhi. We're just trying to make it as difficult as possible on him.

THE MODERATOR: Thank you.

FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports

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