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NBA FINALS: WARRIORS VS. RAPTORS

June 9, 2019

Kyle Lowry

Toronto, Ontario - Practice Day

Q. Where do you think your team's collective sense of calm comes from?
KYLE LOWRY: Probably Kawhi, Nick Nurse, Danny, Marc. I think we just have a bunch of guys that are in the moment, understanding that we're just going to keep playing and keep working. Kind of just been like this all year, to be honest.

Q. Is it hard to keep it, given the circumstances and the stakes and where you are?
KYLE LOWRY: Not when you've been doing it all year. Not when it is your team. It's what we have done all year. Even in training camp, it wasn't like, oh, talking trash. It's like, Let's come in and get our work in and boom, boom, boom, let's get out of here. Let's work and get going.

Q. We've had a lot of conversations at the beginning of the seasons about what your goals have been and the word "championship" always comes into them. After this many years and being this close to where you are, what does this feel like?
KYLE LOWRY: We didn't do nothing yet. We haven't done anything. We still got to get one more win. It's the first to four. You got champions coming in here and they're going to play their butts off and play extremely hard. For me, we still got to focus on us and take it one possession at a time.

Q. Do you expect KD to play, and how do you think that could impact things?
KYLE LOWRY: I don't know. If he plays, he's an MVP. He's an All-NBA player. He's an All-Star, Finals MVP. He's really, really talented. Really, really good. But we can't focus on that. We have to focus on ourselves. That's one thing we have done all playoffs is kind of focus on ourselves. Go out there and play how we need to play and grind it out and do what we need to do as a team.

Q. This idea of staying in the moment, does it come naturally to you? Have you improved through your years as a pro doing that?
KYLE LOWRY: Yeah, it definitely improved through the years as a pro. Every day isn't given to you. You wake up every day, you just should be happy you wake up every day. People ask me how I'm doing and I say, I'm great; I'm alive. That's kind of the staying-in-the-moment thing that I've always lived by.

So, yeah, it wasn't hard to do. We just kind of made that the forefront of our team.

Q. Sounds like gratitude keeps you in the moment. Is that right?
KYLE LOWRY: Just being alive. I'm here playing basketball for a living. I'm healthy, my kids are healthy. Family's good. Life's pretty good.

Q. Can you just speak to the definition of pressure? What you think of when you hear that?
KYLE LOWRY: What my mom had to go through and my grandmom had to go through, feeding myself, my brother and my cousin and my little cousin and my other little cousins. Going to work, getting up at five in the morning and going to work and making me cereal, having a bowl of cereal sitting in the refrigerator with some milk and being able to provide for me and my brother and my family. That's pressure. That's pressure to me. Just being willing to do whatever it takes to make sure that your kid will see better than what you've ever seen. Getting up and taking public transportation an hour and a half away. People like that are heroes to me -- just going to work and grinding and doing whatever it takes to provide for your family and protect who you have to protect.

Q. Before Kawhi and Danny and Marc Gasol and Nick Nurse, this was a very different organization emotionally?
KYLE LOWRY: Yeah.

Q. What would that group have been like following two wins at Oracle, and how much is the fact that you guys didn't even celebrate at all apparently, how much does that make you more equipped for what you're trying to do?
KYLE LOWRY: I think what the other group, not we wouldn't have been happy, but we would have been -- it is what it is, like a little bit maybe a smile or two. Now, we've just been like this all year. Kind of just like, We haven't done anything. You don't do anything in this league unless you win the trophy. You can accomplish this or that, but at the end of the day we have certain goals and standards that we want to reach. I think that's the one thing that we have all kind of just like -- our end goal would be a championship. And that's what we have been working for all year.

Q. When you're looking at a box score after a game, what stat are you looking for individually and for the team?
KYLE LOWRY: Individually, just kind of what I've done -- rebounds, rushed shots from the floor. We're at such a good age nowadays where you can look up and see what's going on in your stats, so you don't have to look at the box score as much. But as a team you look at points off of turnovers, transition points. Second-chance points is one thing I look at. Rebounding, I think that's one thing that I always look at to see where the game was. You can't really tell the game from the stat sheet, but can you see what's going on. Free throw line, free throw attempts. There's a different mixture of things.

Q. How does it feel to be an icon all over Canada to kids?
KYLE LOWRY: I'm not -- that's a crazy question. I ain't never been asked that one. I don't know. I will put it this way: I was once a kid and I was once in your shoes. To be able to know kids one day will want to be like me, I hold myself to a super high standard. I want kids and you to see a man that's really professional, really about his business, but at the same time he's still fun and loving and everything else.

That's a great question right there. You can't beat that question. You can't beat that question. You can try, but you can't beat that question.

Q. My question is about Canada fans getting crazy about you guys. Do you guys embrace that feeling or you're trying to keep them out because, as you said, you haven't done anything yet?
KYLE LOWRY: I think fans around the world and our fans, I think '93 was the last time they have had a chance to [celebrate a championship when the Blue Jays won the World Series]. I don't know, were the Montreal Expos still here? They had two teams at the time. They had a team to celebrate across the country.

I understand where they're coming from. We want them to be excited. We want them to be happy. We want them to be energetic. But we still got work to do.

FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports

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