NBA EASTERN CONFERENCE FINALS: HAWKS VS. BUCKS

June 28, 2021

Pat Connaughton

Milwaukee Bucks

Practice Day

Q. For you in this series, you guys in Game 1, you played that real deep drop, Game 2 you brought the help and you stunted a little bit more and you got in those driving lanes. Game 3 it felt like they threw more skip passes and they saw the help a little earlier and played with your help a little bit. How do you kind of continue to improve defensively against them?

PAT CONNAUGHTON: Yeah, I think it's continuing to have the activity, continuing to have the help, and then just making it a little bit tougher on ball. The skip passes are easier to make when they have a little less pressure and they feel a little bit more comfortable.

So it’s good to have a mixture of help and but also making it tought, knowing that guys have your back, myself, Giannis, we're going to be in the lane at least starting. But that team defense, that scramble mentality and the biggest thing is the defensive rebounding. You have to continue to rebound and try to keep them off the board and keep the second-chance points to a minimum, and when we do have good half-court defense, you know, I'm sure they are going to try to run more, try to push the pace, try to take a few chances on those long-distance passes.

So it's just about making sure we maintain an awareness for that.

Q. I know you try not to listen to anything that's happening outside of your bubble, but throughout the season, one of the biggest critiques of the team is the dropped coverage and can you play it and is Brook going to be unplayable when the playoffs come around and all those things. Those are questions that keep coming up around your team. What have you seen from Brook and you guys defensively that the drop takes many forms, right, like you can tweak it for a specific matchup and make it work. What makes Brook so malleable in that way?

PAT CONNAUGHTON: Brook deserves a lot more credit for his versatility than I think he gets. Obviously the drop coverage and his ability to be at the rim is his strong suit. But you see times, especially late in shot clocks, we're late red and he'll follow Trae around and wave his hands like a maniac to make it a little bit hard for Trae to see the rim or get a pass off or do whatever and he can move his feet better than people give him credit for. George Hill and I used to call it Lopez Island for a while back in my first year here. He does a really good job of giving his best effort on the defensive end in all facets of the game, and it's a situational thing.

The drop coverage is important for our defense, and I'm sure regardless of what happens, there will be people that still disagree with the drop coverage, no matter how far we go or how many games we win. You have to have a little bit of everything in your arsenal, and I think Brook provides a lot more than just drop coverage.

Q. Giannis said yesterday that he doesn't want to put you guys in that situation where you need to have a monster late-game performance. Is there anything the film revealed about how you can get off to a faster start, knowing the Hawks will do everything they can to avoid falling 3-1?

PAT CONNAUGHTON: It's the Eastern Conference Finals; I think the attention to detail, the intensity, things of that nature have to be amped up from the jump ball. From the first possession we struggled and we had a turnover and they got a transition basket. The Hawks are an offensively explosive team, and they are going to come out running and gunning and our transition defense has there be there from the jump. The ball pressure on Trae and the help behind Jrue to make him feel like he can put that ball pressure on him, all those things have to be there, and then that mental discipline to continue to have it on a possession by possession basis over a 48-minute period is what's going to cause that.

But I think there were just spurts throughout the game where to start a little bit sometimes in the third quarter, there were just some spurts where I think our guard got led down or our attention to detail got letdown. We dropped a few coverages and they got a few open looks and they are a great team, so they are going to make you pay when that happens.

Q. With Trae being questionable, do you guys prepare as though he's going to play or do you prepare for both scenarios?

PAT CONNAUGHTON: I think you prepare like he's going to play. It's the Eastern Conference Finals. You know, as a competitor, we've all as athletes been in positions where we've been banged up but we all want to play. We all want to be out there for our team and we all want to win. That's the competitive nature within us. So you prepare as if he's there, and if he's not, you make adjustments accordingly. They have a full team.

So they have great players, whether he plays or not, and obviously he's the head of the snake. But you've got to respect anybody that checks in the game on that side of the ball.

Q. What does it do for the team when you're battling back the whole time, you don't lead until the third and it took a superhuman performance from Khris in the fourth, but to battle back in that way to take the lead in the series, what does that do for you?

PAT CONNAUGHTON: It just shows the growth we've had as a team to fight through adversity. You saw it in the Brooklyn series especially in Game 7 when they kept seeming to find a way to extend that lead from two to three or five to six or whatever it ended up being.

But we understand that it's a 48-minute game and even when we are not playing our best, we have a chance to win games because of our ability to defend, because of our ability to have offensive explosions and because of the individual talent that we have from a guy like Khris or Jrue or Giannis or whoever gets hot throughout the course of the game or late in the game.

We'd like to play better. It gives us the confidence to know that we can play better and we will play better, but to be able to find a way to win a game oftentimes especially in the playoffs is as important as anything else.

Q. How do you bounce back from the emotions of the series, getting a road win and try to do it again tomorrow night?

PAT CONNAUGHTON: It's just mentally locking in and understanding, hey, each playoff game is like it's own movie, right. You have time to be excited and happy after last night's win because you just won a game to take a 2-1 series lead in the Eastern Conference Finals, but then you've got to utilize today to recover, rest, refill your tank and then tomorrow is a new day. It's a new day. It's a day where they are going to come out guns blazing, and they are going to try to make sure that they can even the series up and it's our job to forget what happened and to be mentally locked in on tomorrow because that's all that matters moving forward.

Q. Obviously when the Hawks are at home here, you expect some of the others to maybe play better at home; how can you go in there and match that energy on the road where obviously Bobby was big and you had some key moments?

PAT CONNAUGHTON: For us, we have our mantra, bench mob. We have our mantra of it doesn't matter what we do that fills up a stats sheet or what doesn't. We want to come in and help find a way to affect the game in a positive way to help us win. Not everything shows up on the stat sheets, some things do, but we have to have the same mental toughness, energy, effort, intensity, physicality. There's a certain core group of things we have to have on a nightly basis in order to support the starting unit.

We don't see it as much as it's our bench unit versus their bench unit or our others versus their others. For us, it's about priding ourselves on what we do and making sure we have that intensity, that effort, that energy, that physicality on a nightly basis, and everything else will take care of itself. There's going to be nights where you know, as a bench unit, we get 15, 20 shots as a group. There's going to be nights where we get five to 10.

But we have to find a way to have an effect on the game regardless, and that shows up in the rebounding, it shows up in the defense, and that shows up in the hustle plays and that's what really helps spark us to continue and help the starters win.

Q. You talked about the drop coverage already, but when you all switched to the switch defense, and you're stuck out there on an island on your own with Trae Young, what's the No. 1 objective for you when you know you're kind of out there by yourself?

PAT CONNAUGHTON: It's about understanding what he likes. We want to try to force him into a situation where you know the moves that are his go-to moves and you want to try to force him into second or third counters.

You have to understand obviously your advantage and disadvantages versus him, but also understand that sometimes he uses your advantages, aka physicality, size, strength against you by drawing fouls and things, so you want to defend without fouling. At the end of the day you just want to try to force him into a tough shot. He's going to make some tough shots; he's a terrific player. But if you can force him into a tough shot you can force him into a contested deep three, you can force him into a contested deep three, you can force him into a contested mid-range two or an off-balance floater, then you've done your job.

Q. What has kept you guys, I don't know if "loose" is the right word and what I mean by that is at the start of the year, a lot of the players the focus has been to get to this point, championship expectations. And then guys sign here or get traded here to win a title, right. So how do you play within that, like that's the expectation, that's the goal, but then not like crippling yourselves, you know what I mean? I don't know if staying loose is the right word, maybe you are loose. I know the protocols have made that hard, too. It’s not like you guys have just been able to be yourselves all the time. How have you struck that balance of like meeting the expectation you're setting but not being -- like buckling under it when you get to Game 6 or 7 in Brooklyn, or Game 3 in Atlanta, that type of thing.

PAT CONNAUGHTON: I call it staying present more than staying loose. But staying present, because when you start the season you have a goal in mind, and you always have an understanding of what your goals are and what the expectations are.

But to be able to take yourself out of those expectations and understand what you're doing that day, understand what you're doing that game, understand what the coverage is, the personnel is, but staying in the present in that moment. When you think about expectations and what your goals are, you're thinking about the future.

When you're thinking about what happened in the last game, whether it was good or bad, you're thinking about the past. So how do you find ways to stay in the present and understand what your job is that day to put yourself in a position to accomplish that goal in the long run. And that's looking at the film from the mental standpoint, and a recovery day from a physical standpoint. And that's what we and I are focused on today because that helps me stay in the present.

Tomorrow I'm not going to remember what happened in the last game. I'm not going to remember the shot I made. I'm not going to remember the shot I missed. I'm going to focus on the things I need to do to put myself in a position to have success tomorrow and help my team win tomorrow and focus on what the game plan is tomorrow in order to try to stay in the present. Because it's kind of like that mantra when I was a kid and I wanted to be an NBA player and that was my dream. It wasn't going to happen overnight. There was a lot of things I had to focus on first and foremost in order to put myself in a position to have that opportunity.

Q. Oddly, has this year helped with that? I think Bud was asked about Break Breads at the start of the series and he said I don't know when the first one was because it seemed like it changed all the time. Not knowing what you were going to be doing, did that help to a degree this year for you guys? Literally all you knew was get tested, go to your practice and a game. Does that make sense? Did the weird setup assist that in any way?

PAT CONNAUGHTON: Yeah, it did. It helped and hurt. I'd say it helped in the exact way you were talking about. Like there was nothing you could plan for, there was nothing you could look forward to because you didn't know what the hell was going to happen. To the same token, you weren't allowed to do Break Breads, so you had more time to yourself. You had more time in your own thoughts. You had more time to think about the good or the bad or the indifferent that happened last game or what you were going to do next game, or whatever it was that kind of took you out of that present moment.

Whereas usually you're able to do Break Breads and spend time with your teammates and you're enjoying that part of it as well. But you're right, definitely the unknown and being able to, I would say, adjust is something that keeps your mind at the most present.