Ron Adams is the legendary assistant coach whom Steve Kerr brought with him when he began with the Warriors. I’ve always enjoyed his scholarly and thoughtful discussions of basketball.

The series of exclusive, unreleased Ron Adams chats so far:

• #1. On Stephen Curry‘s defense

• #2. Draymond Green figures out Houston

• #3. How players and coaches handle pressure

• #4. Kerr’s speeches, Defensive Communication

• #5. Coaching influences, shutting down my question

• #6. Houston’s 27 missed threes (group discussion)

I had some interesting chats with him with other reporters present and multiple people asking questions, so they’re not exclusive. But they’ve not been published in full before, so enjoy! These are from right before the 2018 NBA Finals.

Question: How surprised were you about the first half of Game 7 [vs HOU, 2018 WCF, where the Warriors came out flat and trailed by double digits]?

Ron Adams: Well, we have played a bit that way this year. Game 6 had an element of that at home.

But I think there's a number of factors. Houston really came out... overly intense, I mean they were, you know, significant effort on their part.

I thought offensively, we looked a bit... disheveled, but kind of eventually worked it out. Defensively, we hung in, but we got some foul trouble early.

There's always an ebb and flow in every game and I thought, they [HOU] are home, this is a significant event in their modern history. This is a chance for them to do something they've been pointed towards doing and you expect the best from that team. That intensity sometimes breeds the kind of play that we have.

But more than that, we could've done better in the first quarter. Then gradually we settled and got back into it and did some really good things defensively and offensively.

Here is a video about Klay Thompson’s contributions to Game 6.

27 Straight Missed Threes

Question: When a team misses 27 threes [HOU famously missed 27 threes in a row to lose the game], were you able to see you were doing things defensively? Or did they just miss a bunch of shots?

Ron Adams. I looked at this game. It's interesting.

Our defensive statistics were really really good in this series. Probably better sometimes than we actually played.

And I think in game seven, I think you saw this in the Boston series [BOS-CLE also went to Game 7 in the 2018 ECF], there is a lot of pressure on you. And I thought we made them miss some shots. I thought, the second half especially, we did a good job on James Harden's three point shooting. Really impressive. But then other times, they had open looks and they missed them.

Again, the pressure for players is intense. And it keeps getting more so, the character of the media. The scrutiny of the game is amazing. Just the scrutiny. All that goes around the game. We've have been going through it before a few times with that. Our guys, we have some guys who offensively don't think they'll miss at any point in the game. That helps, the confidence.

It's tough, tough question for shooters. It's always interesting, that the really great shooters come to the front, and the other guys, it's tougher.

I thought they played a really good series.

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