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Raptors' Nurse: 'I don't really give a crap' about history of teams down 0-2

Gary Dineen / National Basketball Association / Getty

The Milwaukee Bucks appear to have the Toronto Raptors on the ropes in the Eastern Conference finals, but Toronto coach Nick Nurse isn't interested in the fact that 94 percent of NBA teams with 2-0 leads have gone on to win their best-of-seven series.

"How do I find the solace (in that)?" Nurse said Saturday, according to ESPN's Tim Bontemps. "I find the solace when (the Oklahoma City Thunder) got beat by 34 and 24 and went down 2-0 (during the 2012 Western Conference finals) and then won four straight against a great, great, great, great San Antonio team.

"I don't know ... I don't really give a crap about that. I just want our team to come play their ass off (in Game 3) and get one game and it changes the series."

The Raptors collectively failed to execute during the first two games in Milwaukee, with key players struggling throughout both. Pascal Siakam, for example, shot 37.2 percent from the floor in the two contests, while Danny Green clocked in at 26.7 percent.

Veteran center Marc Gasol, in particular, has come up short, shooting 14.6 percent. With the Bucks' defense regularly collapsing the paint, almost half of Gasol's shots have come from beyond the arc - where he's connected on just 2-of-9.

As such, Nurse was questioned about potential lineup changes for Game 3, specifically about swapping out Gasol for the more mobile Serge Ibaka and starting Norman Powell over Green. But Nurse responded by reinforcing the fact that Gasol and Green are veteran players with a combined 20 years of NBA experience.

"I think your question here is this: 'Are you gonna dance with the one you brung to the ball?'" Nurse said. "It's not easy. You think certain series aren't for certain guys, et cetera, but I also think that we've gotten, we've had bad biorhythms a couple times, maybe three or four times in the playoffs, and then the next game our biorhythms were back intact.

"So I kinda trust these guys, know who they are, believe in 'em, and know they're better than they played last night and have shown that on bounce-back situations usually."

Game 3 goes Sunday at 7 p.m. ET in Toronto.

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