The Toronto Raptors will not allow their displays to be affected by the Golden State Warriors' injury woes in the NBA Finals.
The Warriors were missing Kevin Durant, Klay Thompson and Kevon Looney for Game 3 and lost 123-109 at home, with the recently returned DeMarcus Cousins also evidently out of sorts.
Victory on the road gave the Raptors a 2-1 lead in the series, but coach Nick Nurse insists they paid little attention to the late absence of Thompson, who had featured in the warm-up.
"It doesn't impact it very much," he told reporters. "I think we're at the point of this series where we've got to get out and guard these dudes, whoever's out there.
"We've got to get playing our defense, quit worrying so much about special plays, this, that, and the other thing. We need to get into the ball.
"When you're guarding it, be great at guarding the ball; when your man doesn't have it, help, make the rotations; if somebody goes to help, help the helper.
"Fly out at shooters and block out. We've got to do a better job of that if we want to win."
Takin' whatever bridge we want back to SF up 2-1. #WeTheNorth pic.twitter.com/udlQ2YwEaS
— Toronto Raptors (@Raptors) June 6, 2019
And Kyle Lowry says Toronto will not be concerned by any updates on the status of Thompson and Durant before Friday's Game 4 in Oakland.
"We have just got to prepare the same way. We're a real defensive-minded team," he said. "We know they've got those type of weapons, but we've got to just prepare ourselves to be focused on ourselves.
"And that's the one thing we have always done: continued to work on ourselves and work on what we can do.
"We can't control anything else what the Warriors do, we've just got to go out there and do what we can do to get better, continue to grow, and see what we can make adjustments on."
