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NBA FINALS: WARRIORS VS. RAPTORS


June 4, 2019


Kyle Lowry


Oakland, California - Practice Day

Q. After the game, Stephen Curry referred to the box-and-one that you guys played as a janky defense. What did you think of the janky defense that you guys played? How did it work?
KYLE LOWRY: (Chuckling.) Sometimes when your coach draws something up, you just kind of go with it. It is what it is. It's one of those things where Coach says, This is what we're going to do. And we just did it.

I didn't look at it as anything but what Coach said to do. I don't know if it worked or not. I don't know the numbers or whatever it was. But it was pretty innovative. The first time a team has probably ever played box-and-one in the NBA ever. So you give Nick Nurse credit for that. But I guess you can call it janky.

Q. I think you touched on this a little bit before with Nick or about Nick, but it takes a certain amount of conviction, I guess, to fourth quarter of a Finals game draw up a defense that no one ever seems to have used in the NBA and obviously you've never practiced. Maybe a little bit what it says about Nick?
KYLE LOWRY: Never practiced that ever. I don't think I've ever run a box-and-one in my life, I'm going to be honest with you.

Q. What did he tell you you needed to do?
KYLE LOWRY: Literally he drew Fred -- he said this is Steph, you have Steph. He put me, Kawhi, Pascal and Marc on the board in spots and said, Stand there. So, I mean, it was just like, Play defense.

And, listen, I don't make too much of it because it is what it is with our head coach. He want us to do that; that's what we did. You can always say this about it or that about it. You can laugh at it. You could clown it. It is what it is. So it's just like playing zone. When the zone first got introduced to the NBA guys were like, Zone? But it was just like a zone.

Q. But do you kind of respect the fact that he's willing to do things that are not --
KYLE LOWRY: Nothing Nick does surprises me now on the on the court as a coach. It doesn't surprise me. That one kind of caught me off guard, but, yeah, it was innovative.

Q. To follow up on that, he did say he kind of consulted with you guys. My question is has he consulted you guys often during the season on various strategies?
KYLE LOWRY: Yeah, Nick is very player friendly. He'll ask us this or that, and he'll say are you guys comfortable with doing this or what do you think about this or that? And a lot of the times the situations that he puts us in are to be successful. He's done a good job of this year letting Pascal play kind of point forward games and putting different type of offenses and schemes and defensive schemes. He's been really good. We're in The Finals for a reason, and he's helped us get here.

Q. KD is out, Looney is out, Klay is questionable. Do you come into Game 3 with any sort of sense of urgency that this is an opportunity you guys really have to seize?
KYLE LOWRY: I think we come into a sense of urgency, period. No matter the situation. We want to be the first to four, and every game is an urgent game. You're in the NBA Finals, so it doesn't matter. They still have professional basketball players down there, and they're really talented basketball players. So you still got to be ready to go out there and play your butt off and play hard.

Q. You guys had two stretches in that game, obviously the first six minutes of the third and the last five, six minutes of the game, I think you generated five free throws over those two stretches. Anything about them that stand out to you why you guys could go so cold for any other quarter of the game?
KYLE LOWRY: Just didn't play aggressive. We didn't play with enough pace. We watched the film and saw things that we wish we had back. Those first three minutes of the third quarter, we wish we would have had back. We got a couple shots that we missed. Just the overall urgency of coming out with the third quarter, knowing how good they are as a good third-quarter team, we have to be a little bit more aggressive and assertive.

Q. Just the fact that you kind of felt them there a little bit in the third quarter, showed resiliency in the fourth period, almost coming back and winning the game, do you think it was kind of a good learning experience just to kind of get their best shot there in the third quarter as the series goes along?
KYLE LOWRY: I don't know if that was their best shot. They made a run, and we continued to play. Basketball is a game of runs. And we're never going to stop doing what we do. We want to continue to try to play hard and win the basketball game.

Q. As that's unfolding, like that third-period run, just knowing that they have done that to other teams, you guys missed some open shots, does that mentally affect you a little bit as you go through that period there?
KYLE LOWRY: No. We still had a chance to win the game at the end of the game. We just kept playing and kept working.

THE MODERATOR: Thank you.

FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports

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