Carlos Avila Gonzalez/S.F. Chronicle
Carlos Avila Gonzalez/S.F. Chronicle
Carlos Avila Gonzalez/S.F. Chronicle
Carlos Avila Gonzalez/S.F. Chronicle
HOUSTON – The Golden State Warriors were getting their butts kicked. Two games in a row they wheezed and bumbled their way to definitive losses to the younger, more determined Rockets.
Steve Kerr was getting his butt kicked as his Warriors blew a 3-1 series lead. He told his players after Game 6 that he didn’t have them prepared. None of them protested.
Kerr was being upstaged by Rockets coach Ime Udoka, who did have his team prepared, and who was winning the chess battle. Mid-series, down 3-1, Udoka invented on the fly a brilliant zone defense that became a seemingly unsolvable puzzle for the Warriors. Call it the Udoka Sudoku.
Article continues below this ad
Back in the 2022 NBA Finals, Kerr and the Warriors bested Udoka and the Boston Celtics, but in this series it was looking like the young, fiery coach had learned many lessons and sped past his graying rival.
So what happened that turned the tables in Sunday’s Game 7, a 103-89 Warriors win? The Warriors suddenly looked prepared in every way. They solved the puzzle, found the Fountain of Youth and Cool. Closed the energy gap. Discovered the heart they lacked in the two previous games.
The switch-flipper was not a rah-rah speech by Kerr at Saturday night’s team dinner. His speech was not, as Kerr explained before Sunday’s game, a fiery Knute Rockne special. That’s just as well. The Warriors are so young, even the old Warriors, they probably think Rockne is the fictional boxer played by Sylvester Stallone.
Kerr’s message was quiet and simple:
Article continues below this ad
“Lose yourself in the game and let it rip,” Kerr said he told his players. “Then, if you lose, there’s sorrow, but there’s no regrets.”
Isn’t that how the Warriors looked Sunday?
Maybe even more impactful was what Kerr said to Draymond Green at Sunday morning’s shootaround.
“He (was) just really setting a tone for what he needed from me today,” Green said. “Which is poise, leadership, but he had some great words.”
Among those words, “Go out, have fun with poise, give your guys something to follow.”
Article continues below this ad
Green said Kerr told him, “‘It’s my job to let you know what your leadership should be tonight. How you need to lead, what that needs to look like, it’s my job to prepare you for that, my job to get you emotionally ready to play.’ One of the better conversations we’ve ever had, and we’ve had some great ones. But that one I’ll remember for the rest of my life.”
A leader leading a leader.
Come to think of it, it’s been a while since Kerr got so angry at his team that he busted a clipboard in disgust. Maybe, rather than losing his fire, he has gained a better understanding of what his team needs in a crisis.
“Steve’s so calm in these situations, everybody gets rattled, he just be like this,” Green said, moving his hand in a flat and steady motion. “So when you have a coach that walks in like that, it settles everybody down. Obviously, he’s the best in the business when it comes to doing that this time of year.”
After a game like this, a series like this, it’s easy to forget that a couple years ago, in the wake of Green punching teammate Jordan Poole, critics were begging the Warriors to get rid of Green, the emotional time bomb whom Kerr obviously couldn’t control. Kerr lobbied to keep Green, explaining that the Warriors couldn’t win a title without him.
Article continues below this ad
Sunday could have been a disaster for Kerr. Armchair coaches were demanding that Kerr jerk cold-shooting/no-defense Buddy Hield out of the starting lineup, go with the steadier Moses Moody, or little-used (recently) Jonathan Kuminga to counter the Rockets’ youth and athleticism.
Deaf to the cries of anguish from critics – and yes, I was among those believing that starting Hield was a mistake – Kerr went with him, and Buddy went off, 33 points, 9-for-11 on 3s. Also, he provided some tough defense, causing a turnover that wiped out the Rockets’ dying hopes.
“I never wavered on starting Buddy,” Kerr said. “The lineup we started tonight has been by far our best five-man unit in this series, so I knew I was going to stay with Buddy.”
And Kuminga? Had the Warriors lost to the athletically superior Rockets, and Kuminga had remained bench-bound, Kerr would have been roasted in the court of public opinion. Well, Kuminga played seven minutes off the bench, mostly because Gary Payton II was out ill. He shot 0-for-4 and grabbed a rebound. Kerr might be proven wrong on Kuminga someday in the future, but he plays the guys who are effective, and Kuminga has not been.
Pep talks aside, the Warriors needed strategic guidance. Kerr took Stephen Curry off the ball more, taking away the killer traps the Rockets were throwing at Curry. The coach found a way to space the floor better on offense, to attack that puzzling Udoka zone.
Article continues below this ad
And Kerr threw a zone defense of his own out there, perhaps on the advice of his defensive coordinator, Jerry Stackhouse. One thing Kerr does is listen to his coaches.
Maybe Kerr, in his 11th season, hasn’t lost his Dalai Lama fastball, after all. If you’re keeping score, the Warriors under Kerr are 9-3 in elimination games, 5-1 on the road, and 4-1 in seventh games in a playoff series.
There’s plenty of opportunity ahead for Kerr and the Warriors to embarrass themselves in these playoffs. But they just knocked off the No. 2 Conference seed, and looked shockingly poised and prepared while doing it. If it wasn’t Not-Knute Kerr’s finest hour, it was a darn good one.
