Kerr details unique collaboration process for new-look Warriors originally appeared on NBC Sports Bay Area
LAIE, Hawaii – Chaos is how Steve Kerr best describes the start of his first training camp as Warriors head coach in 2014. The ball was flying all over the gym and there were too many turnovers to count as the first-time head coach tried to get his team to buy into playing faster and faster than ever before. Kerr was implementing his system and creating a culture he knew he believed in, despite not having any coaching experience.
Admittedly, moments of doubt crept in.
“We were not very disciplined those first few days,” Kerr tells NBC Sports Bay Area in an exclusive interview. “I remember thinking, ‘Is this going to work? Do I know what the hell I’m doing?’
“Obviously, it evened out. It’s a good reminder to me the first few days of training camp are always a little rough.”
The crazy chaos Kerr had to shake his head at early on quickly turned into controlled chaos, leading to 67 wins and the Warriors’ first championship in 40 years.
Golden State became the trendsetters of the modern NBA. Everybody was looking for ways to both be the Warriors, and beat the Warriors. As they launched 3-pointers left and right and from unthinkable distances, their competition began catching up, or at least they tried. The small-ball revolution is thanks in large part to Kerr, as well as having the luxury of generational talent in Steph Curry, Klay Thompson, Draymond Green, Kevin Durant, Andre Iguodala and others to pull it off.
Now, the game has grown bigger with front-court players becoming more skilled and 7-footers stepping behind the 3-point line. Evolving never stops, especially for a franchise that went to five straight NBA Finals and won four titles in an eight-year span.
“Trying to figure out the puzzle for a particular roster each year, it changes,” Kerr said. “You have to adapt and as a coach you just learn that every season is very different and just try to put guys in the best position to succeed.”
That’s the spot Kerr finds himself in now three seasons removed from the Warriors’ most recent championship. Since taking down the Boston Celtics over six games in 2022, the Warriors fell to a No. 6 seed that lost in the second round of the playoffs and then all the way down to a No. 10 seed in a season where they failed to make the playoffs.
This past summer was one of triumph for Kerr, winning a gold medal at the 2024 Paris Summer Olympics as the head coach of Team USA with Curry by his side. It also was a time for reflection and re-evaluation.
A gut check will do that. Getting punched in the mouth by your Northern California rivals made the competitor in Kerr know changes had to come.
The biggest change the Warriors are facing is life without Klay Thompson. With or without him, however, staying stagnant couldn’t be an option for Kerr and the Warriors. The Warriors still will be a byproduct of Kerr’s four core values of joy, mindfulness, compassion and competitiveness. Plenty will stay the same, but it will be impossible to ignore the changes Kerr has added, particularly to his offense.
Long before he won gold and bounced ideas off coaches Ty Lue, Erik Spoelstra and Mark Few, and even before adding his own new coaches in Terry Stotts to enhance the offense and Jerry Stackhouse to get the Warriors back to being a top defensive team, Kerr took advantage of his unusually long offseason by picking the brains of others. Pride has to be put to the side to be a great leader, and Kerr never has been one to deny collaboration and absorb the teachings of others.
Specifically, he wants everything to be clear without any fog in the way for a team that only features seven holdovers from their 2022 championship group.
“I really used this past offseason before the Olympics to visit with other coaches, to ask a lot of questions, to figure out what can we do better,” Kerr said, “and of the things was becoming clearer with terminology.”
A drive to Santa Clara to sit in on one of 49ers head coach Kyle Shanahan’s meetings was eye-opening.
“He was going through all their actions on this one play and he had such specific terminology and that was really helpful. We haven’t labeled a lot of things, we’ve ran a lot of organic offense in the past where we’ve kind of given them the freedom to roam and play out of concepts.
“We’re labeling things, we’re trying to make things a lot more clearer, especially for our young players so they know exactly what the cut is called, what the screen is called. So that’s a change for us and something we’re trying to do better, and I think it will make a big impact.”
Chaos turned to championships faster than anybody could have imagined, including even Kerr. Unique collaboration for a clearer understanding of terminology by all is what Kerr believes can have the Warriors back to climbing the NBA’s chaotic mountaintop to contend for championships once more.
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