Toronto Raptors centre Marc Gasol (33) and Golden State Warriors centre DeMarcus Cousins (0) battle for the ball during second half basketball action in Game 3 of the NBA Finals in Oakland, California on Wednesday, June 5, 2019. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Frank Gunn

OAKLAND, Calif. - When the final buzzer sounded on Wednesday's win, Raptors coach Nick Nurse sat with his head bowed, lost in thought.

Nurse's mom Marcella would have turned 95 on Tuesday and, a day after Toronto's 123-109 victory that gave his team a 2-1 lead, the coach reflected on the woman who's not here to celebrate the Raptors' historic run.

"Obviously it was a big, tough win (Wednesday)," the 51-year-old coach said. "She's on my mind every day, but she was a little more after her birthday the day before."

Marcella died in December while the Raptors were on a west coast trip. Nurse, the youngest of nine kids, was thankful she lived long enough to see him become head coach.

"Like any mom, she went to every game I played when I was younger and when I played in college," said Nurse, who grew up in Carroll, Iowa and played at Northern Iowa. "My senior year my dad retired early so they could go to every single game, home and away. Put a lot of miles on the car and all that kind of stuff. They were big fans."

Now, the rookie head coach is two wins away from guiding the Raptors to their first NBA championship in the team's 24-year-history.

"He looks young. But he's pretty old," Kyle Lowry deadpanned.

For those who knew little about the first-year head coach before the post-season tipped off, Nurse has proven to be an entertaining study. In his pre-game media availability Wednesday, he was asked about the guitar he brings along on trips.

"I'm not very good," Nurse said, adding his playlist includes Bob Dylan and Johnny Cash.

He took some heat — much of it good-natured — about his use of the rudimentary box-and-one defence, something middle-school kids might play, in Game 2. Stephen Curry called it "janky."

How'd the jokes sit with him?

"I don't really care," Nurse said. "I don't really give a crap, is my line. If things work, I don't care if I go out there and four guys stand on their head and we get a stop, right? And it was very effective."

The Raptors held the Warriors scoreless for five minutes in Game 2 with the box-and-one.

In Game 3, Curry went off for a career playoff high 47 points.

"There's nothing janky about (Wednesday), let's put it that way," Curry said on Toronto's defence. "They showed bodies, they threw different guys at me. I was just a little bit more aggressive, trying to look for shots."

Nurse wasn't thrilled with his team's defensive effort on Curry, one half of the so-called Splash Brothers.

"He had 47 points. I don't know if we did, had enough attention on him or we had anything going on him, to be honest with you," the coach said.

Raptors star Kawhi Leonard had kind words for the rookie coach Thursday.

"He's done a great job," the Raptors star said. "We're in The Finals his first year."

Is there an element of Nurse's coaching that reminds him of his former San Antonio coach Gregg Popovich, or another veteran NBA coach?

"Just competitive nature. He's able to change schemes quickly, adjust," Leonard said. "But it's tough to compare somebody that's been coaching for 20 years and this is his first year in the NBA, even though he coached, been a head coach in other levels."

The Raptors will have to contend with the other half of the Splash Brothers on Friday. Klay Thompson is expected to return for Golden State after sitting out Wednesday with a hamstring injury.

"The one thing about Klay, he brings defence, he brings offence, he brings just that extra swag that they have as a team and as an individual competitor," Lowry said. "He's one of the toughest guys out there."

The morning after the Raptors handed Golden State its first loss on their homecourt since April 25, the conversation was dominated by the ugly incident the previous night when Lowry was shoved by Warriors part-owner Mark Stevens.

Lowry wished that wasn't the case.

"It sucks that this has to take the front page of the Finals," he said. "It's been a fun Finals. It's been a competitive finals. It really sucks that this had to be a part of it."

Stevens was fined US$500,000 and banned for a year for the incident.

After 21 post-season games, the Raptors are just two wins away from the prize they've said all season is their ultimate goal: the Larry O'Brien Trophy.

But there's no celebrating yet. They filed off the Oracle Arena floor after Wednesday's win with a business-like demeanour. Tough to tell it's their first time on the game's biggest stage. But they've soaked up the even-keeled demeanour of Leonard and the mood at Thursday's shootaround was no different.

"We haven't done anything yet. I haven't done anything yet. It's just one game," said Danny Green, who had six threes in Wednesday's win. "We have a lot of work to do still."

Fred VanVleet said it's also a byproduct of being "engulfed in the excellence" that it takes to keep playing at a high level for weeks on end.

"The post-season is about two months long, so you have to be playing at a really high level for a long time. That's been something that I just try to keep in mind the entire time," he said.

Is the key for Game 4 to not get ahead of themselves?

"We haven't got ahead of ourselves the whole year. We haven't gotten ahead of ourselves in the playoffs, and it's not going to start now," VanVleet said. "We're up 2-1 and we're on the road and we just want to try to get another win. We're not thinking about the rest of the series. We're thinking about Game 4, trying to get a win against the defending champs."

Warriors coach Steve Kerr says forward Kevin Durant, who hasn't played since May 8 due to a calf injury, will not play Friday.

The series returns to Toronto for Game 5 on Monday.

News from © The Canadian Press, 2019