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NBA EASTERN CONFERENCE FINALS: CELTICS VS CAVALIERS

May 21, 2017

Brad Stevens

Boston, Massachusetts: Pregame

Q. With Isaiah out, what changes for you, and how does your rotation look tonight?
BRAD STEVENS: I think we're going to start Smart there. We played a handful of games this year with this group that Isaiah has missed, and then Smart started a lot in the past. Obviously it changes a little bit how we play, some of the things we call on the offensive end of the floor. And then defensively we'll be a little bit bigger across the board. But at the end of the day, we're going to have to start well, certainly better than the last two games.

Q. You're down 0-2 and they've controlled the play from the get-go. What's the message? Is it, hey, we've got nothing to lose, let it all hang out? Or what's your message to the team at this point?
BRAD STEVENS: I think our message is always to try to play the next possession as well as you possibly can. We never really get out of that. Our guys have done a good job of that all year. They've done a good job of staying positive after a tough situation. I thought yesterday's film session, you could see that there was some real hurt there from the day before. We didn't want to watch very much of that. We didn't watch very much of that. But today we had the typical bounce that we've had all year. I think it's a great testament to these guys. They are extremely resilient. They're a pleasure to coach because there's never any finger pointing. There's never any of that stuff; it's just, let's figure out what we need to do to be on the attack and try to manage our margin for error better.

So hopefully we start better. I think that's a huge part. But at the end of the day, I love our attitude.

Q. I think you said this morning at shootaround that Game 2 the Cavs played as well as anyone had ever played against a team you coached. I wanted to clarify, does that count college as well?
BRAD STEVENS: Yeah, I think they would have beaten all those teams, too. (Laughter). When we went back and watched what we did watch, what we watched was us missing a couple of shots that were pretty open, and that affecting our transition defense. And then the other thing that we watched was we had some tremendous defensive possessions where they hit end-of-shot-clock shots. Kyrie on that shake-and-raise in the corner.

LeBron over his left shoulder in the second half. A couple plays in the first half. They're great players. They're going to make some of those. You have to be able to move on to the next play a little bit quicker and realize that even those guys aren't going to make all of those. But the other night, it didn't feel like they missed very many of them.

Q. I know Amir is back for you in the starting lineup. But when you go back through who the Cavs have played this year in the playoffs, the Pacers changed their starting lineup and put C.J. [Miles] on the floor and the Raptors pulled Jonas [Valanciunas] out of the starting lineup. And then you moved away from Amir and went to Gerald in Game 2. The common theme is get more shooting and more scoring. Is that just trying to outscore this team? Is that how you beat them? I know it sounds silly, but just trying to score more points than them?
BRAD STEVENS: Well, people are changing lineups because they're losing. You're trying to find the best combination to try to give yourself the best chance. I think when you look at what you have as a team and what are the best things that you do, our identity has to be on the other end of the floor with the group we've got. Certainly with the size now, we'll do some different things. And we have to play differently offensively. A little bit less spread pick-and-roll and random drags and those type of things, where a guy like Gerald spacing the floor with Isaiah with the ball makes a lot of sense.

But again, you have to play well regardless of who's out there. You're going to have to come up with stops. You're going to have to come up with scores, and we're going to have to manufacture some points in some different ways maybe than we have.

Q. I know you said this morning Isaiah is going to start meeting with specialists this morning, but is there a chance he comes to Cleveland and is here for Game 4?
BRAD STEVENS: I have not asked that question. I think he's going to be leaving the area to go meet with specialists across the country. I don't know how long that will take. If he settles on a course of action or whatever the case may be on Monday, I can certainly see him coming, and we would arrange that. But I think first things first would be to figure out what needs to be done and take care of that.

Q. The other night when you said Geno Auriemma probably didn't know what you were going through, were you talking about the margin of the loss?
BRAD STEVENS: He's usually on the other side of those, yeah.

Q. I was just wondering if there was anything else about just the enormity of your challenge that he's probably not used to?
BRAD STEVENS: I think if you coach long enough you've been in this where it was one of those nights, where nobody wants to go through that. None of you wanted to go through that. And so I think ultimately, you move on, you look at what you can do different, and you realize that every game starts fresh. Every game starts 0-0, and you go control what you can control on both ends of the court. And we've talked a lot about that. I think our guys are itching to play. Obviously we're here for a reason, and we've got tough-minded, competitive guys who have largely been guys that have had to really earn their way up in this league.

I'm looking forward to seeing how we compete.

Q. The other night Ty Lue said that part of their strategy is going to be giving some open shots, and he has to remind his guys that they have to stick with that even when you guys are making some of those shots. When the Cavs are making their difficult shots like they did the other night, do you have to constantly remind your team that it's still possible to have a quality defensive possession when the ball goes in the way that it did?
BRAD STEVENS: We don't measure our offense or defense based on whether or not the shot goes in. We measure it based on -- not to get too analytics based, but what the expected result would be, based on a season full of percentages. So you might have a game where you shoot it terribly, but you got shots that your normal expectation would be that you would make a ton of those shots. That's how we gauge how efficient we look on offense from an execution standpoint. And defense as well.

There were a couple games in the playoffs thus far we felt really good about ourselves when that thing ended. And then I get the email later on that night, and I don't feel quite as good. I send them back and say, you're wrong. But they're really not. I think the biggest thing is that you guard as well as you can and you try to make them as tough as possible.

Q. Terry Rozier seems to be the guy who's really in line to see his role significantly increase. What specific conversations have you had with him in particular over the last 24 hours?
BRAD STEVENS: Nothing out of the norm. He played a lot in the first couple of series, so he's going to be expected to play similar to that role off the bench. It could be anywhere from 15 to more minutes depending on how it goes with everything else. One of the things that I think is really, really difficult about this Cleveland team, beyond the obvious of the talent and the ability to play well on both ends, is that their start-of-second-quarter, start-of-fourth-quarter group where LeBron is basically the 5, those are really unique matchups. And so the start is important, but the bench in those moments is really important, too.

FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports

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