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NBA FINALS: WARRIORS VS. RAPTORSJune 10, 2019Steve KerrToronto, Ontario - Pregame 5 Q. How did Kevin Durant respond to his workouts during the last 36 hours or so and will he start tonight? STEVE KERR: He responded well and, yeah, he's going to play. Q. Is this a situation where it kind of desperate times call for desperate measures? Because in Game 3 you kind of held out Klay because you said it was a long series and now your backs are really against the wall. If it was a situation similar to Game 3, would he play tonight with the way he's feeling right now? STEVE KERR: Are we really going to go into it that deeply? He can play now. He's been cleared, so he's going to play. Q. When Cleveland came back on you guys in that series obviously there was some big personnel changes, you lost Draymond a game and you lost Bogut. Does it take something like that beyond just X's and O's to change a series, and is maybe having Kevin in your mind possibly it? STEVE KERR: I haven't researched every 3-1 deficit, but generally speaking when you get to the Finals or the Conference Finals you got two great teams, and so if a team can get a win when it's 3-1 and make it 3-2, they got some momentum. So that's the idea, that's the whole idea tonight is play better than we have been playing and get some momentum early, win one game and then the tenor of the series changes. So that's our goal. Q. No one knows better what KD brings at his best, but even at I guess maybe a bit of a stripped-down model, what does he do for your team, what could he do for Klay and Steph? STEVE KERR: Well, even without having played he's still such a huge threat and he can get his shot off against anybody and we'll see. I don't want to put too much of a burden on him. It's been a while, we don't know how it's going to go, how it's going to look, but just his mere presence makes a huge difference for us, so we'll start him and play him in short bursts and see how he responds physically, see if his wind is okay and as the game goes, we'll try to figure it out from there. Q. When you look at your bench tonight, who stands out as the X factor that could help you get over the line? STEVE KERR: I don't think there is one. I think we just have to play better as a team. I'm more hoping that Kevin's return can sort of normalize the bench players' roles. Guys get into routines in the NBA and they're used to playing with certain combinations and playing certain roles. It's tough when you move pieces around. So I think the idea tonight is let's get back to looking more like ourselves and everybody can fit into their role and everybody can do their thing and we'll play better. Q. With Kevin coming back what do you envision how that will affect what Andre's role will be, as well as the center rotation? STEVE KERR: Well, Andre's obviously going to play a huge role in the game. He does in every game that he plays. The center position, we have kind of played for years with a center-by-committee approach. So we'll find combinations and we'll go from there. But I'm not going to sit here and tell you exactly what I'm going to do. Q. One thing we haven't seen you do a lot of in the series is play small with Draymond at center. You're not going to get into too much detail but just having Kevin back gives you the flexibility to do that more than you've been able to, I imagine that's a nice thing? STEVE KERR: Well, yeah, the strength of playing that way is the versatility in the scoring, and so we have that option. We haven't really had that option so far in this series. We did it for a few minutes I think in Game 2. But, yeah, we have got that as an option. Q. Do you feel like Patrick McCaw being on the Toronto team gives them some sort of insider information, intel on your system, on your schemes? STEVE KERR: I'm sure Patrick's been giving them the entire playbook and the scouting report. I have no idea. Q. What do you remember about being down 3-1 against OKC and then coming back and being up 3-1 against Cleveland and letting it slip away. What things stand out in both those situations? STEVE KERR: Same thing that stands out in every series that I've ever been involved in, player, coach, GM, one game turns a series. It changes the momentum, it changes the feel. And so the whole focus is just win a game. So you don't need to look beyond tonight, you just need to go out and play well and win a game and then go from there. Q. With Durant being in and the way that DeMarcus the way he started Game 2, what we saw in Game 3 and 4, how do you see Kevin coming in and possibly affecting DeMarcus's minutes tonight? STEVE KERR: Well, Kevin's insertion changes quite a bit for us and so we have an idea of how we're going to play and what our rotation will look like, and of course I'm not going to tell you then. Q. What do you think is going to take you to beat the Raptors? Also you're getting Durant back and it's going to be a huge boost as you say, but besides that what do you think it's going to take to get past the Raptors? STEVE KERR: We got to cut down our turnovers. We had 19 the other game, and got to improve our defense. I thought we played a good first half of defense, but it's going to require a full game of solid defense. We do those two things, I like our chances. FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports   |
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