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NBA EASTERN CONFERENCE FINALS: HEAT v PACERSMay 26, 2014LeBron JamesDwyane WadeMIAMI, FLORIDA: Game Four Indiana Pacers - 90 Q.  There was a lot of talk the past couple of days about getting off to a better start, and then you guys did. What was the key difference for you tonight? LeBRON JAMES: Chris Bosh. We got off to that fast start because Chris Bosh came out and got it going early. Q. Dwyane, what's the confidence like right now? You're fond of saying that sometime all you do is hold serve at home. But holding serve at home has you one win away from a fourth straight trip to The Finals. Has that reality kind of sunk in yet? DWYANE WADE: I mean, we understand the moment. We're never going to say we don't. But kind of as I said after the game, we also understand that you have to get to four wins before you can move on. So we have to complete that task. We feel we've been playing good basketball the last three games, and we want to continue that. Especially going here on the road, it's going to be the toughest game of the series, probably for us, is Game 5 back there. But we're up to the challenge as always. Q. LeBron, was your play tonight just your play per usual, or were you motivated in the least by Lance's words? LeBRON JAMES: No, I don't need any motivation. I'm motivated enough to try to get back The Finals. That's motivating enough, and being one of the leaders of this team, I have to do my job. I have to do my part to help us win. That's what it's all about. Q. Do you find he's comical, his words?  LeBRON JAMES: I got a smirk out of it. Q. For both of you guys, moments ago Paul George said the Pacers outplayed you guys on the stat sheet and that the only discrepancy was that you guys were getting to the free‑throw line 30 times. If that is the case, what allowed you to get so aggressive at the basket and to get to the line so many times? DWYANE WADE: We was just playing the game. I thought we did a good job of just being aggressive. We will never try and we can't control free throws. The only thing we can do is play our game. We did a good job of getting in the paint, trying to make the defense collapse, and we were able to benefit from that. All we care about is winning the ballgame, and we were able to do that. LeBRON JAMES: We did only have five turnovers, seven steals, and 20 points off their turnovers. That has nothing to do with the free‑throw line. Q. LeBron, what do you think of the moves that Coach Spoelstra has made, particularly with the lineup and the rotation changing from game to game? LeBRON JAMES: The fact that‑‑ it makes it a lot easier for Spo when you have true professionals, guys that can sit out for one month, two months, two weeks, and get the nod, and they're ready to go right then and there. That makes it a lot easier on our coaching staff to have the locker room and the group of guys we have. That's why Spo and Riles and those guys went out and got this team. It wasn't just about the game of basketball. It's about what they bring to the locker room as well. To insert U.D. back into the starting lineup and then take him out and insert Rashard. Or when D‑Wade went down and Toney Douglas came in or J.J. came in in the Charlotte series. It's whatever. G.O.'s number could still get called. B's number could still get called. Those guys are ready. That's the type of locker room we have. It makes it a lot easier for Coach when you have that type of luxury. DWYANE WADE: I don't remember the question (laughing).  He took care of it. LeBRON JAMES: I took care of it. Don't worry about it. I got you. Q. LeBron, every time you guys have been up 3‑1, it's always gone to 4‑1 in the next opportunity since you guys have been together down here. Going up there is going to be quite an atmosphere, obviously, but can you already envision what it's going to take to close them out on Wednesday? LeBRON JAMES: It's going to take a better game than we had tonight. It's that simple. You have to get better every game. Their back is against the wall, but we have to go in with that mindset that our back is against the wall, too. We don't want to come back with a Game 6. We love our fans, obviously. We love being in Miami, but we want to try to close it out. But we're going to have to work for it. It's not going to be easy, not against this team. It's the No.1 team in the Eastern Conference, and they're there for a reason. So we look forward to the challenge. Q. You said that Chris was key to the fast start. How did you guys help get him involved early? LeBRON JAMES: The first play of the game was ran for him, and he opened it up with a jumper. Second play, D‑Wade drove the ball, kicked it to him in the corner, and he hit a three. From that point on, he just got it going. He had 10 points in the first quarter. Should have had 12; he missed two free throws. I haven't seen that from him in a while, but he just got it going. We rode him that whole first quarter, and it gave us the 27‑19 lead. Q. For both of you guys, Paul George just was in here, and he said, "We've got to learn not to give teams like this bulletin board material. It's not very smart to do it in this situation." I want to know how you guys learned not to give people bulletin board material. DWYANE WADE: I mean, it just comes with experience. You understand, as we continue to say, we've never really been a team that gave someone a lot of bulletin board material, but we played Boston a lot, and they made it more than just about basketball, and they beat us in the mental game as well as the physical game. We learned that the only way we're going to beat them is if we beat them playing the game of basketball. They're great at that mental game. So I think from that point, we try to leave that alone. We try to beat you at basketball. We don't go into the back‑and‑forth talking because that's not what we're here for, and that's not going to win us a game. So we try to beat you at basketball. Q. Guys, Paul went even further than just to say that the win or loss was at the free‑throw line. Paul came in here and said, oh, it was home cooking. What do you think when you hear a team make such a big deal out of it? LeBRON JAMES: For us, we just want to play great basketball. We don't really get involved in whatever that we can't control. What we can control is how we approach the game from an offensive and defensive standpoint, and that's with aggression. That's how we approach the game. At the end of the game, whatever the end results is, we can be satisfied with that if we brought our game. Everything else doesn't matter. When you get between the lines of the court, 94 feet, and you got to get in between, and you got to play it. That's all we try to worry about. We can't worry about nothing else. Q. LeBron, pregame you said that you had a good idea of how you wanted to get the game started. Hearing you speak now, was it to get Chris going, or was yourself involved part that have? LeBRON JAMES: It was to get Chris going. We needed it from him. C.B. had been struggling offensively the last few games, and we needed that. We needed it from him. So Spo called it, and I was able to‑‑ D‑Wade was able to make the pass. I was able to slice over the top to release pressure from him, make Hibbert back up into the lane, and that got him his first shot. That was the game plan for us. We've been talking about it the last couple of days, how are we going to get C.B. going? It worked out for us tonight. Q. Spo talked about how Rashard Lewis' stat line was zeros across the board, yet he was a plus‑14. How much does it mean to you, all the little things these guys do? DWYANE WADE: He's going to make a shot one day. He is one of the all‑time top three‑point shooters ‑‑ he's top ten all time. LeBRON JAMES: All time, yeah. DWYANE WADE: But like we told him, man, he's given us so much with his effort. He's sticking one of the best at his position, David West, it's not easy to guard him, but he's given us great minutes. We want him to continue to shoot the ball. He can shoot it as many times as possible. That's what our team is about. It's about whoever's number is called, stepping up to the challenge. And Rashard did it for us again tonight on the defensive end of the floor with his effort. FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports |
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