Watch Warriors @ Raptors Game 2 in the early hours of Monday morning (1am) live on Sky Sports Arena
Monday 3 June 2019 00:04, UK
Golden State Warriors head coach Steve Kerr called on his players to learn from their series-opening defeat heading into Game 2 of the NBA Finals.
Kerr admitted the defending NBA champions did not play their "'A' game" in their 118-109 Game 1 defeat but said his team will relish the challenge of levelling the series, live on Sky Sports Arena in the early hours of Monday morning (1am).
"You know that as soon as you lose a game, it will be on the crawl that now we only have a 19.7 per cent chance of winning the series. Then if we win tomorrow we'll have a 42.7 chance of not losing the series. This stuff is what it is," he said.
"You lose a game, you come back and you try to win. And the team we're playing knows that better than anybody. They were down 2-0 and came back and won four straight (in the Eastern Conference Finals).
"So these things change quickly, but you have to be prepared for everything. You have to learn from your mistakes. You have to keep fighting. It's actually pretty simple. The execution of it is not simple, but when you watch it on tape, okay, this is what we have to do, and then are we good enough to do it? That's what makes it fun. You get to test yourself."
Kerr praised the fervent atmosphere created by the Raptors fans inside the ScotiaBank Arena in Game 1 but said the "hostile environment" did not affect his players in Game 1 and will not in Game 2.
"It was a great, great atmosphere. The national anthem was one of the coolest things I've ever been a part of. It was beautiful," he said.
"I thought our guys responded well. We're used to playing on the road, hostile environments, all that. I don't think we played our 'A' game. We did some good things and there are a lot of areas we need to improve. But the crowd will never have anything to do with that with this team. We're going to play our game.
"Frankly, it's fun to be in these environments, to be challenged, to be threatened, especially because the Canadian fans are so nice that even when they're harassing us they do it in a very polite manner."
Kerr cited defensive rotations as one area the Warriors must improve in Game 2.
"[In Game 1], there were some plays where we didn't rotate all the way through. The two [Marc] Gasol threes early in the game stood out where we just kind of stopped; can't do that. That's regular-season basketball," he said.
"Playoff basketball, you have to make every rotation until the shot clock goes out, until you get the rebound.
"So there were plenty of mistakes, but also plenty of good things that we did. If you just boil it down to halfcourt stuff, I walk away from that game feeling fine. It was, as I said many times, transition that opened up the game and really hurt us."
Game 2 takes place in Toronto in the early hours of Monday morning (1am) live on Sky Sports Arena
