NBA FINALS: CELTICS VS. MAVERICKS

June 13, 2024

Josh Green

Dallas Mavericks

Practice Day

Q. What was that film session like for you guys today?

JOSH GREEN: It was good. I think it's important to be able to look at what we didn't do right and learn from that and just make sure we're ready.

Q. What were some of the things you guys can learn from?

JOSH GREEN: I just think there's been certain things that we've done continuously in games that we probably should have made adjustments on. But overall we always watch film and it's always an open discussion. And I think that's what's cool with Coach, is he sees both sides of us and is able to talk it out with the players.

Q. You saw Luka's six fouls. What did you think of it?

JOSH GREEN: When you're in the game, I'm not really studying every single foul he commits. At the end of the day it's --

Q. Talk about the last one.

JOSH GREEN: It's unfortunate. It's a hard position to be put into. But at the end of the day, he's doing it for a reason, and it's because he wants to win the game. He's a competitive guy, so I'm not holding my head a certain way. I know he wants to win, and he's a very competitive leader, and he's the leader of our team.

Q. How challenging is it when you have a number of guys who play with a lot of passion, a lot of emotion, that's one of the strengths, and you don't have calls going your way, and not allowing that to get in your head. How challenging is that for a player?

JOSH GREEN: Yeah, I mean, it's obviously challenging. The refs are -- as frustrating as they can be sometimes, they're also the same as us, they have emotions, they change the way -- the same way players get frustrated, they can get frustrated.

But obviously I think it can change the game a little bit, but I think that's what's helped our team is when we've been at our best, we don't let it hurt us. We kind of use it, use that energy and shift it to us. We kind of let certain things change the way the game goes.

It can be challenging for players for sure, but I really back our group, and we have a group of guys that I know I'll go to battle with all the time.

No matter what the energy is, I always feel like we can always turn it around.

Q. What's your mindset as a team going into this elimination game?

JOSH GREEN: Leave it all out on the floor. That's what we need to do.

Q. How do you balance playing your game but also not getting the gap get too wide on a game by game basis in terms of the quantity of threes that they take?

JOSH GREEN: I mean, they're a big three-point team. That's one of their biggest focuses. They're a great shooting team. I mean, it's just part of the game, and it's like, you're saying from like a defensive point of view --

Q. Like overall realistically from a game planning, is there a range where you want to stay in terms of, if they shoot 40 threes do you want to try to get up 30? How do you manage that?

JOSH GREEN: Obviously our goal is always keep a team under 100, and that's been our biggest emphasis from day one of training camp, is holding teams to under 100 points.

I think our team, we've done great defensively, and I think we do have a great defensive team.

Obviously they've hit some tough shots, but overall I think we have played good defense. But going into the game, it's hard to say limit them to a certain number, but obviously we want to limit them to under whatever their averages were.

And obviously we know they're a big three-point team, and just like us, we're a big corner three-point team, and they've done a good job of taking that away.