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NBA EASTERN CONFERENCE FINALS: MAGIC v CAVALIERS

May 27, 2009

Mike Brown

CLEVELAND, OHIO: Practice Day

Q. Mike, you guys have been able to stay loose and stay strong all season long. How do you stay loose in this situation now?
COACH BROWN: We're going to have to. That's our nature. And we're at our best when we are. So our guys, you know, let it all hang out.

Q. How impressive has it been to watch how they've shot the ball all series?
COACH BROWN: They've shot the ball very well. Obviously one of our wins, we had to hit a shot at the buzzer to win it. But, I mean, two of their wins, they basically had a 3. We're up 2. They hit a 3. That's been a tough shot to get the wins.
And, you know, in this business you do need to have luck on your side at times and combined with skill. And the shots that Rashard hit were a combination of both. And obviously the same with Brian. So you just hope that that happens more for you than for the other team.

Q. Have you seen a team stay that hot for that long?
COACH BROWN: You hope that happens. But it's a good team. They're a good shooting team. And for the most part they take 3s at the right time. They get your defense moving off the dribble penetration, whether it's from a pick-and-roll or from going inside to Dwight and then kicking out, or playing pick-and-roll with Dwight and you gotta tag and help out because he's such a big body.
But when you do that, they've seen the ball at the right time, and then that guy drives and they look to tip. They do a nice job driving and kicking the basketball and getting the nice looks from the 3-point line. And when you do that you just hope that, you do hope they're going to miss it, start to miss it at a certain time. And we'll have it again. Hopefully that'll start soon.

Q. After one of the playoff victories a couple of weeks ago, at a post-game press conference someone asked you a question to the effect, are you going to know much about this team until you face them in adversity in the playoffs? Well, what do you know?
COACH BROWN: I still have confidence and trust in this team. This team is together. They're determined. I can't knock the effort that I've gotten from the four playoff games we've played against these guys right now.
They've played extremely hard. And Orlando shot the crap out of the ball. And not only that, they hit two big shots basically at the end of the two games to sway it either way.
And, you know, this series has been that close. It's been that even. And the one game that they did win, you know, by eight or whatever points, I mean you could say the same for our first two games here. We were up almost 20 points both games.
I think this as almost as even a series as you can expect or ask for. They just made one or two plays down the stretch more than us. But our group, I still feel the confidence, I still feel the togetherness, and I still feel like we have a chance to win this.

Q. Mike, Stan Montgomery said after the game they lost that he would have done something different on the last play. Is there anything you can do different strategy-wise that you haven't tried already in this series?
COACH BROWN: Yeah, there are a few things that we can do to mix it up and that we'll continue to try to explore. But you don't want to go too far away from your comfort zone because if you do then you're completely guessing out there and really living and dying on the luck of the Irish, I guess, huh? (Laughter).

Q. LeBron on Rafer, is that something that you're going to revisit before tomorrow?
COACH BROWN: Yeah, we may. We talked about it. It was good for us. Rafer got hot obviously yesterday in the third quarter. The points that Rafer scored, they all went on LeBron. We ended up lacking some pick-and-rolls which have been successful for us so far with Rafer and LeBron. And he hit, I know, five points for sure when we ended up blocking them off when our big one turned. So Rafer had a roll-in. Three seconds on the shot clock. Shot them leaning 3 over LeBron. And I think I heard them call "Glass," and then it went in. So he had a role in that game.

Q. (Indiscernible)?
COACH BROWN: Yeah, you know, there's just one possession that that happened and he hit a 3. But besides that one possession, you know, LeBron basically played our game plan.
We felt, with the way Pietrus is shooting the ball, Courtney Lee and the way Courtney Lee is driving it also, Rashard, and then with Dwight posting, if LeBron can guard Rafer, yeah, he may be able at times help off and close out to him with a good body or a bigger body in, quote/unquote, LeBron. You can't take away all the options. You gotta hope that they miss somewhere.
And right now they're doing a good job of not missing.

Q. I know you said they were good, you thought they were good going in. Of the four games, have they played better than you anticipated?
COACH BROWN: I thought that they would be good. I thought we'd play at times at certain situations a little bit better. But we hadn't. You just hope that they wouldn't hit some of the shots they hit. Because they hit some tough ones. And especially down the stretch. Down the stretch we turned the ball over a couple times, too, so that's affecting us.
But I thought it would be about what it was except in terms of the series, the number in the series.

Q. In the regulation, there's 40 seconds left when they were up by 1, how much consideration to go for 2-for-1 as opposed to getting a good shot off?
COACH BROWN: You know, in a situation like that, when you're up 1, that's not my style. I don't want to go 2-for-1 just to jack the ball up there.
I did want to take the first available look that we had, but I don't want to move it, move it, move it past two good looks just to run the shot clock down. I want to play basketball, because I think if you pass up a look at that time you may not get another one. And so it wasn't that we said we were going to run the shot clock down or run the game clock down, we just took the best available shot at that time was.

Q. What is your plan for tonight? Are you going to actually physically practice? Is it more video? You've had players speak at times.
COACH BROWN: What do you mean?

Q. You had "Z" talk to the team in Detroit.
COACH BROWN: I did?

Q. Yeah. I see you've had them talk, I remember.
COACH BROWN: I can't remember. I might have. But I can't remember. I'm sorry.

Q. That's all right. So what are you doing tonight?
COACH BROWN: We're watching some tape and we'll go over a few things on the floor. But we're not taping ankles. We're not running up and down. We know what we have to do and we'll just have to clean some things up to get ready for tomorrow.

End of FastScripts

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