Steve Kerr’s Secret Genius: Weathering the Storm with Warriors Young Guys
It’s been a tough few months to be a Warriors believer. Early in the season, this was a contending team with the number 1 defense and the number 3 offense. They were an unstoppable force of beautiful basketball, a ballet of the merged-minds of Stephen Curry and Draymond Green. To the outside observer, the Warriors are stuck in a slump and are sliding down the rankings, however, as we explore here, it’s all a deception, designed to prepare the team for a deep playoff run – or I’m incapable of accepting that they suck.
For the past month, the Warriors have struggled without their defensive anchor, lead playmaker and chief referee-screamer Draymond Green and they’re 6-9 in their last 15 games. There have been some tough losses and some badly blown leads in these last 15 games – giving up 20 point leads against the Mavs and Lakers within the space of a week in the midst of a 5 game losing streak. Watching LeBron bomb 3 consecutive 3’s in the fourth quarter was one of those inevitable reminders that, even if he’s 37 and his team is hot garbage in yellow suits, he’s still the LeBron James.
In the midst of all this losing the team and the team actively waving the white flag on the 2 seed, I searched for who to blame this debacle on: how could a team that was a convincing finals contender in December look like this?
Looking at the starters, Steph is still getting over his parents’ divorce and the resulting shooting slump it caused (divorce changes everyone), but he’s improved since the all-star break and looks to be on his way back. Klay went down with an ‘illness’ and lost his shot along the way, but the man is recovering from 2 years of career-changing injuries so he deserves to be cut some slack. Meanwhile, Andrew Wiggins reverted to the meagre Minnesota version of himself after being named an All-Star starter. Some blame can go to Wiggins, but if you ever thought that Wiggins was going to be the bedrock of this team then you need to place more blame on yourself for being completely delusional.
At the end of the bench, Andre Igoudala is apparently a full-time coach focused on teaching James Wiseman how to play basketball while the forgotten number 2 pick recovers from a meniscus tear – the two of them being stored away in a hyperbaric chamber for the playoffs. In better news, Draymond’s return is just over a week away.
So it’s back to the old touchstone: blame Steve Kerr!
Blaming Steve Kerr is an old Warriors pastime handed down from the same crowd that used to blame everything on Mark Jackson (I am the former Australian president of the Blame Mark Jackson association). Kerr certainly has his faults as a coach; he runs the offense one way and that’s it, he’s extremely loyal to guys like at the end of the bench and too often this season he’s pulled Jordan Poole just as he starts heating up so Damion Lee can get a tight 3 minute spell.
Kerr has been intimately involved in 3 different dynasties, , he’s a student of two of the greatest coaches in NBA history, the Zen Master Phil Jackson and Gregg Popovich. Kerr presents as more of a firebrand than Phil and Pop; about once a year he’ll need to be physically restrained by his coaching staff while he attempts to kill a referee. Kerr’s not afraid of a bit of argy-bargy he’s been decked by Michael Jordan before and just got right back up and kept hitting shots.
With 8 years under his belt, Kerr is the third-longest tenured coach in the league and has already been to the Finals 5 times. The associated mental exhaustion shouldn’t be underestimated, especially after he had to spend all of the 2018/19 season with Draymond and KD at each other’s throats, and they still made the finals. Take a look at Brooklyn, superstar teams are a ticking time bomb of pure ego.
I say that to say this: Steve Kerr is a genius and what he’s done in these months without Draymond will help the Warriors more in the depths of the playoffs than it’s hindered them in the regular season.
The Warriors have recognised the fact that if every team is going to triple-team Curry, even when he doesn’t have the ball, everyone else needs to step up. There’s a million guards on this team and none of them are true playmakers – everyone wants to get their own shot. The problem is, only one of them is Steph Curry and teams would rather force the ball out of Steph’s hands with as many defenders as possible and take their chances that one of the other guys can beat them. At this stage, the only way these guys are getting better is by force.
I’d compare the Warriors last few months of the season like when you drive past a rural property on fire and think ‘hey, all that grass on fire looks like a bad thing’, only to be told by a proper country boy ‘nah mate – back burning’. Steve Kerr is standing in the middle of a fire he started, completely invulnerable to its burns because he meant to do this and it’s actually a good thing for the environment around him.
Klay’s shooting poorly? That’s fine, let him shoot every time he touches the ball until he finds it again. This mantra of embracing the pain can eventually lead to profit if Klay returns to 90% of his former self, forcing teams to look at someone other than Curry on offense.
The steady rise of Jonathan Kuminga
The Warriors surprised many in this year’s draft when they took the sashimi-raw Kuminga with the 7th overall pick, the second year in a row they have selected an inexperienced high-upside big man. Kuminga was just ok during the Summer League then missed the pre-season and the first 5 games of the season due to COVID. Coach Kerr has gradually started increasing Kuminga’s minutes during the season, and he’s now a regular part of the rotation, averaging just over 25 minutes a game since February.
I have wanted to write about Kuminga since the 20th of January, when I looked at the 8 games he’d played more than 18 minutes, averaging 18 points on 11 shots a game for 58% shooting. However, I was convinced by friend to TBC and take-brainstormer Jacob that I was relying on a small sample size and that wasn’t evidence that Kuminga knew how to play basketball – arguably, a fair statement.
Kuminga didn’t play any college basketball; instead, he was an inaugural member of the G-League Ignite, the NBA’s new pathway for entry which doesn’t require college experience and actually pays its players. These are all good things but the Ignite only played 16 games, not what you would call good preparation for an 82 game NBA season. Safe to say that Kuminga’s experience playing elite level basketball was somewhat limited.
When Kuminga first checked into an NBA game he was a bundle of pent-up energy looking to prove himself in the short 6 minute stint he was given to prove himself in. Kuminga’s first month was fits-and-starts but his athleticism was immediately obvious, he has absolute lightning in his calves. He can get from the floor to the rim with so little effort and in such little time that sometimes it takes a moment to register the fact he’s just dunked. Even if he spent the first few months of the season with no idea where everyone else was going in the offense most of the time, he knew that if he cut towards the hoop when the rest of the team looked at Curry, he’d find himself an open dunk. On defense, he’s still relying on his athleticism and speed to make up for the fact he doesn’t have a clue what’s happening.
Gradually, Kuminga has proved himself to be a reliable and efficient scorer, who has demanded more minutes through his improving play, without demanding the existing stars give him the ball. He’s developed a great chemistry with Klay, peeling out of screens and handoffs to the rim, where he’s only one step away from a dunk. His first step is insanely fast, he goes from standstill to full sprint in enough time to remind you that you could have never been an elite athlete.
At his best, he’s an effortless athlete who can exploit his physical advantages against his defender, who’s one step faster than his man and can dunk off half a jump. Watch him dunk on Hartenstein, he barely even jumps!
Kuminga’s now playing 25 minutes a game and he’s averaging 15 points. He’s spending plenty of time out there in the 4th quarters in close games, where teams have been finding success targeting his inexperience, but he’s earning those scars now. At 6 foot 7, Kuminga is one of the Warriors few forward options. With every chance the Warriors will run into Jokic or Ayton, who expose the team’s critical lack of size. Kuminga is going to see a lot of minutes defending those guys, even if it’s just to use up his 6 fouls and slow the other team down. Putting him in these situations now at the expense of a higher seed may prove to be far more valuable.
Having Kuminga out there late in games is both a function of Warriors lack of forward depth – there’s been a whole lot of Kevon Looney minutes this year, and a desire for him to keep learning on the job. Credit to him, Kuminga’s learning fast, all while playing for a team that considers anything less than another deep playoff run to be a failure.
Kuminga’s fellow draft-mate, Moses Moody, has been put through the same process, just without the fate of the franchise on his shoulders. He was a shining light in their recent loss to Denver, scoring 30 points in a game that Jokic used as a warm-up until the 4th quarter, shutting down the Warrior’s hopes that their B-team could end a 4 game losing streak.
Let Jordan Poole be himself
Poole began the season as the starting shooting guard, holding down the position until Klay came back and had some firebrand performances. Outside of Curry, Poole is one of the only players that can create his own shot. His herky-jerky dribble style and long strides are enough to constantly find himself a shot. He takes a lot of difficult shots, but he makes enough that you live with the misses.
Poole gives his defender problems every time he gets the ball but every now and again he remembers there’s another 4 guys out there on his team. Like everything Poole does, he always takes the flashiest option, throwing passes over his shoulder or between his legs to dunkers in the paint as he drives through the lane. There’s no halfway with Poole, it’s either near-impossible or it’s not happening.
Poole doesn’t fit within the Warriors offense, which is focused on ball movement and constant off-ball motion. Poole likes the ball in his hand so he can attack his defender with fourteen different dribble moves, before throwing himself into an up-and-under layup. Kerr is a rebel in that sense, and Kerr doesn’t hesitate to pull him from the court if he goes three unsuccessful trips down the court without making an attempt at playmaking. Kerr is willing to let Kuminga and Moody make mistakes, but he holds a much shorter leash on Poole.
Poole is the step-brother of the Splash Brothers, and Kerr simply doesn’t love him as much as his real sons Klay and Steph. Poole has been pushing for a starting role the last two weeks, as he’s led the team in offense from the bench. In an effort to appease everyone, Kerr played all of Curry, Klay and Poole with 5 minutes to go in the Lakers game, but then didn’t run a single play for Poole and pulled him again to leave Klay out there in the last 2 minutes.
Every time he’s given the opportunity to start, Poole either leads the team in scoring or comes second to Curry. He can go on a 10 point run by himself but only if Steve Kerr doesn’t pull him after he gets 5. Again, back to my hypothesis that Kerr knows what he’s doing and this is intentional, he’s being kept hungry for minutes so that he can go off in the playoffs when he has the chance to play 30 minutes for 4 games in a row.
So, where do the Warriors go from here? I have faith that the pain now of watching the Warriors work it out will pay off when it counts, even if that’s not this season. Am I too biased to acknowledge this team has legitimate issues when Draymond isn’t a part of it? Yes. Will I privately slander Steve Kerr if the team doesn’t make a deep playoff run? Absolutely; because everyone knows the truth about an NBA team going wrong – it’s the coach that gets fired first.