Keith Smart Post-Game Interview: Defending The Perimeter, Curry's Turnovers, And More

Warriors.com post-game interview with coach Keith Smart:

On the Blazers’ shooting performance:
“They were hot. Pretty much every time you had a hand up they still made the shot. We have do a better job the next time we play this team, knowing that guys do shoot the ball really well. We have to make sure we get to them and try to make them put the ball on the floor, and perhaps play some scramble defense from there. But they were hitting their hot guys who stayed hot and made shots.”

On Stephen Curry’s turnovers in the game:
“I think it’s a bit of an adjustment [for Curry] because we probably won’t have as much space on the floor as we’ve had in the past, so some of the passes that he’s making right now are passes that he’s always made, but because of the space on the floor it’s not there. But those things are all correctable. It’s nothing major- he’s going to figure it out. He’s a good, talented player and it’s going to work out.”

On the direction of the offense:
“For the most part I think we’re trying to focus on what we’re doing defensively and trying to rebound the ball. We didn’t get off to a good start, so that put us in a hole and we had to try to fight to get up and climb back into the ball game. Once we got ourselves close, you now have worked yourself so hard that you don’t have [the energy] necessary to win the basketball game. We came out at the half, after giving up a ton of points, and got the game under control and settled down. I liked how we bounced back and competed from there.”

On Portland’s position in the Western Conference:
“I think a healthy team for them is going to put them back in the thick of trying to make that playoff run again. We’re trying to grow our basketball team to get into those positions as well. They have an All-Star guard and some size, have some guys that can score that you have to pay attention to on the low box.”

On his influence on the team:
“I’m not trying to do something totally different- I’m just trying to look at the team that we have now and play differently from there. We have a bigger team now, so we want to focus on trying to rebound the basketball. We have to take care of the turnovers, because we’ve given up too many turnovers. What I’m trying to do is get us to play solid in the half-court, rebound the basketball, we still want to run and take advantage of our speed on the floor, but by the same token we want to control the game.”