As the Golden State Warriors prepared for their Play-In Tournament game against the Los Angeles Clippers in April, longtime coach Steve Kerr, who has led the team to four titles, was planning to retire. He told ESPN the day before that game, which the Warriors won thanks to a vintage Stephen Curry performance, that he was 95% certain of his decision.
A month later, well after the Warriors were eliminated from the Play-In Tournament by the Phoenix Suns, he was sitting at the podium for a press conference to discuss the two-year extension he signed this week. The deal will ensure that he remains the highest-paid coach in the league, per ESPN. Last year, Kerr made $17.5 million.
“I’m thrilled to be back,” Kerr said Friday. “I couldn’t be more excited to continue on this job, and we had a great process the last few weeks trying to figure this out together, collaboratively. I don’t think this actually happens in pro sports, honestly, where you have these kind of conversations and genuinely, authentically try to figure out together what’s the right thing, you know? So I’m very lucky to be in this organization, to work with the people I do.”
During an extended session with the Bay Area media, Kerr explained why he wanted to return, the impact Curry and Draymond Green had on his decision and where the Warriors can go from here after missing the playoffs for the second time in the last three years.
‘You might coach again someday, but you’ll never coach the Warriors again’
While Kerr had extensive discussions with Warriors owner Joe Lacob and general manager Mike Dunleavy, he said that a comment from his wife helped him realize he wanted to continue with the organization.
“Ultimately, for me, I took about a week to really think about whether it was the right thing for me and my wife and I spoke every day about it and the bottom line was I still love what I do, which is what I told you guys throughout the season. I love coaching, I love being part of the Warriors,” Kerr said.
“So at the end of about a week, my wife and I decided let’s keep doing this if the Warriors want me to keep doing this. And it was, you know, my wife said something. She said, ‘You know, you might coach again someday, but you’ll never coach the Warriors again.’ And that was really meaningful to me because I love this team, I love our players, and that struck me,” Kerr continued. “I couldn’t imagine walking away from the Warriors. And so, at that point, it was really what do you guys want to do? And we had great meetings and over the course of about a week we all agreed let’s do it. And so here I am.”
‘I know he wanted me to coach, I know I wanted to coach him’
To no surprise, Kerr said that he spoke with both Curry and Draymond Green, the two longest-tenured Warriors, as he was trying to make a decision on his future.
Notably, Kerr said that they “did not have any impact or influence on whether I was going to be the coach.” At least in terms of the front office’s decision-making process. “I think one of the strong points of our organization is that our best player, who is one of the greatest players in the history of the game, is not telling Mike or Joe what to do,” Kerr said. “He understands the repercussions of that, if he wanted to go down that path, and it’s not healthy. It usually doesn’t work out well when a player tries to dictate what an organization does.”
But while Curry and Green may not have told the Warriors what to do, their conversations with Kerr did have an impact on his decision to return as coach.
“I know [Curry] wanted me to coach, I know I wanted to coach [Curry], and that mattered,” Kerr said. “But ultimately we have a really special, strong bond that should carry over into our success as a team. I think I have a better chance of coaching this team than anybody else because of that relationship, my relationship with Draymond, my intimate knowledge of our team and our organization, and, as I said from the beginning, I still love what I do.
“If I were tired and burned out, then I would not be doing this,” Kerr continued. “But I love my job, I love coaching the Warriors, being in this city, being in The Bay, so it all worked out.”
A ‘reality-based shared vision of what does success look like for us’?
The Warriors went 37-45 last season and finished 10th in the Western Conference. Green played 68 games, Curry 43 and Jimmy Butler 38. All three of them are now in their late 30s — Curry is 38 years old; Green and Butler are 36 — and Butler will be out for a significant portion of next season, if not all of it, after tearing his ACL in January.
On any given night, the Warriors can beat any team, but over the course of the season and playoffs, they might be too old and injury-prone to compete for a title. It doesn’t help that Moses Moody, one of their most productive young players, suffered a torn patellar tendon in his left knee in March and does not have a timeline for his return.
Kerr acknowledged as much, and said that he and the front office had to come to terms with that fact heading into the summer.
“I know I have to be better. I didn’t have a great coaching year this year. I know there are a lot of things that I can do better,” Kerr said. “And Mike and Joe know they have a big job on their hands this summer. We’ve gotta find somebody in the draft who can help us and make a couple good signings, maybe a trade, who knows? So that stuff was more general. It wasn’t, sort of, here are the things I need or here are the things they need.
“It was more just an inflection point for the franchise: where we are, where we’ve been and what does it look like,” Kerr continued. “And with the injuries to Jimmy and Moses, I think we had to come to a much more reality-based shared vision of what does success look like for us? What are we trying to accomplish? Because for the first time really since the injury-plagued year — what was that, ’19 or ’20? — we aren’t sitting here saying, ‘Hey, we can win a championship.’ Right? I don’t need to say that, we all kind of know that, where we are, right at this second. And so I think we had to hash that out, we had to talk about all those things.”
Part of that process, Kerr said, will be laying a “stronger foundation for next season that will carry forward for years to come, beyond when I’m here.” He said that trying to leave the organization in a better place is important to him, as well as Curry and Green. But that doesn’t mean the Warriors are punting on next season. They still want to compete, even if it isn’t at a championship level.
“The idea is let’s see how good we can be. And we think we can still be good,” Kerr said. “We’ve gotta get some guys back from injury, we gotta make some moves, I’ve gotta do some things, but let’s run it back, let’s see how good we can be, and I think we were all really excited about that.”
‘The No. 1 thing is it’s up to him’
While Kerr said he spoke to Green about his decision to return to the Warriors, it is not a guarantee that he’ll be coaching the veteran forward next season. Green has a player option for next season worth $27.6 million, and it’s still unclear if he’ll pick that up and take the money, or opt out and try to negotiate a longer-term deal that would provide more future stability.
In April, Green told Tim Kawakami on “The TK Show” that “in an ideal world, I think the best path would be to decline and extend.”
“If I had it my way, I think that would be the best path forward,” Green continued. “But in saying that, and having great representation, we worked really hard to get this option year when it was time for us to negotiate this contract. And so, I think we did the work to put ourselves in position to have some control, and we’ll have a conversation after the season.”
Kerr and Green have not always had a perfect relationship, but they have a long-standing mutual respect for one another. “You know, the No. 1 thing is it’s up to him,” Kerr said of Green’s contract situation,” adding that he is “committed to coaching him, coaching Steph obviously for as long as they are here.”
“I look at them as collaborators and what we’ve built is pretty special,” Kerr continued. “It’s so rare for a coach and two players to be together for 12 years as a trio. It’s remarkable, really. So I’m ready to coach Draymond, and we’ll see how it all plays out. It’s really more up to him than anything, and we’ll see how the contract stuff happens.
For what it’s worth, Dunleavy said the team wants Green back, but it’s up to him. “I think we’ve had the discussions where we want him to finish his career as a Warrior, and he kind of feels the same way,” Dunleavy said. “I expect him to be back, but it’s his call on that.”
