Pregame quotes:
WARRIORS HEAD COACH STEVE KERR
ON GARY PAYTON II RECEIVING HIS CHAMPIONSHIP RING TONIGHT:
“Yeah, It'll be a great moment. I think Gary was one of the big stories from last year's team. To go from a guy who bounced around the league to we release him at the end of training camp, fingers crossed, hoping he clears waivers and then becomes such a key guy for us. We don't win the championship without him, I know that. Thrilled to see Gary tonight we've kept in touch a little bit and I've always got a soft spot for him for what he's overcome to achieve in his career. So it will be great to see him tonight and I know our crowd will give him a huge ovation. He was such a fan favorite for us.”
ON WHY GARY PAYTON II WAS SUCH A FAN FAVORITE IN JUST ONE SEASON:
“Well, he's a really exciting player. He's so good defensively on the ball and I think that the crowd really appreciated his defense, but he's a unique player too. Kind of plays as a finisher around the rim in a guard's body and that's really rare. I think it just was a great fit for us last year. Given that we had perimeter shooting bigs with Otto (Porter Jr.) and Belli (Nemanja Bjelica) and we could play Gary with a lot of lineups and kind of invert our offense and I think the fans really enjoyed just watching him score inside and become such a disruptive defender and just change games so dramatically upon entrance.”
ON THE STATUS OF JAMES WISEMAN:
“He was playing three-on-three this morning with a few of our guys and just rolled his (left) ankle. It’s just unfortunate, but this is fairly common for the guys who get limited minutes to get extra work in the morning after shootaround. He just rolled it. It doesn't seem too serious, but he’ll miss tonight’s game.”
ON THE STATUS OF ANDREW WIGGINS:
“So he was part of that three-on-three and he's getting some court work. He's feeling better (non-Covid illness). So we're hopeful that he will be able to play against Atlanta, but we’ll see. Got a good workout today, and then he'll get another one tomorrow, and hopefully, he progresses to be able to play on Monday.”