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NBA PLAYOFFS ROUND TWO: CLIPPERS v THUNDERMay 9, 2014Doc RiversLOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA: Game Three Thunder – 118 THE MODERATOR: Coach Rivers. COACH RIVERS: I got to do a better job of making sure we're in a better spot. Defensively, if somebody is scoring 118 points, we obviously have to play defense better and I have to coach defense better. Neither team played a lot of defense tonight. We had 112 points. They are a very good offensive team and so are we. But I thought they did enough. They shot above 50%. We didn't. I thought that was the difference in the game. But they got everything. They got threes, layups, key second shots. Down the stretch, they made every big play. Every shot they needed went in. We had shots, too, and they didn't go in. I just thought we put way too much pressure on our offense because our defense wasn't working. Q. How much of that started at the point of attack, getting beat off the dribble? COACH RIVERS: Yeah, some of it was. Then they were dragging us a lot off the pick'n rolls, which strung us out. Left Caron open, who made a couple big shots. It hurt us. Q. You got big numbers out of Blake. Serge had a big game on the other side. How do you look at how much you improved inside? COACH RIVERS: We improved. Blake was efficient. We got him in the right spots tonight. I thought whenever he faced an attack, it's very difficult to guard him. We did a really good job there. Serge made shots. Again, I think that's on our rotations and our defense. We have to do a better job of getting to him. Q. Second straight game they got points from others, wasn't just Westbrook. COACH RIVERS: Serge was one. That was out of rotation. Then Caron was the other one. But all of them played well. Listen, they played well today. They really did. I thought offensively we played good, but defensively we didn't. Q. Talk about as far as the fact that offensively trying to contain them, how much of a fact that it was fatigue that set in. COACH RIVERS: I don't buy into fatigue. They're just as tired as us. Seven‑game series they went through. We've gone through it. You never use that. Everybody's tired right now. Both teams are tired. Both teams in the East and the West are tired. Fatigue cannot be used. We just have to be mentally tougher. You can't be tired. Q. What do you do to turn this around? COACH RIVERS: We have to fight better defensively. I have to do a better job tonight watching film. Obviously you don't want to recreate the wheel, you don't want to do a lot of changes. There's a couple things we have to do in pick'n roll coverage to improve. That's about it. Q. Is their physicality inside affecting your guys' ability to finish consistently? COACH RIVERS: We didn't finish a lot at the basket. I think they hurt us. I don't know what the points in the paint were. They crushed us there. We're getting to the basket. That's what you want to do. We missed a lot of shots at the rim, wide‑open threes. The way I look at it, it's always going to be a make/miss league. That's why you have to lean on your defense so you can fortunately make the other team miss more. You can get a game where you get great shots all game and don't make them, but you can win if you do your defensive stuff. Q. Was it trust in the pass? COACH RIVERS: No, pick'n roll coverage, we have to do a better job of it. Overall we've been pretty good in defense throughout until tonight. We got blitzed. Q. As physical as this game is getting right now, are you okay with your team's poise? COACH RIVERS: Yeah, I thought we were okay. The only thing I didn't like, I thought they were frustrated when they scored, which is good. You want them to be. But you got to keep playing. I thought there was some residual. One guy knows that the defense broke down because there was somebody else. Instead of just keeping playing, you felt like you had to tell them. I'm saying, Okay, let's tell them later but let's just keep playing. It's human nature. Guys want to win. They all want to win. I get that, have no problem with that, but we have to move past that. Thanks, guys. FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports |
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