Highlights of Steve Kerr’s 44-minute conversation with me on “The TK Show” podcast from the middle of last week, discussing…
-The strategies involved in Warriors’ just-clinched championship;
-Asking his players to seriously consider accepting an invitation to visit the Trump White House, if such an invitation is made, to help bring some pieces of the country together;
-Stephen Curry’s unique place in NBA history and much more…
First, here’s my podcast conversation with Kerr, in its entirely, linked here.
Now to just about 75 percent of a full transcript, and it’s good stuff…
* On his personal feelings are about a potential post-championship visit to Donald Trump’s White House:
–KERR: The biggest thing for me is it’s about the players. This is a visit that’s about the team. We have not met about it because we haven’t been invited.
But I would want to make sure the players gave this really a lot of thought. Everybody knows I’ve been a very outspoken critic of Trump’s and as a result maybe we won’t get the invitation.
I do think it is very important to consider a potential invitation because I think it could have really positive ramifications if we did go. And it’s a different way to look at it.
I, like many of our players, am very offended by some of Trump’s words and actions. On the other hand, I do think there’s something to respecting the office, respecting our institutions, our government. And I think it can make a statement in a time where there is so much divide and everybody seems to be angry with each other.
It might be a good statement for us to go and to show, that, hey, let’s put this aside, put all this partisan stuff aside, and personal stuff aside, respect the institution. And maybe even if one of you players wants to voice your concerns over what’s happening, what better opportunity to do so.
Now that may be incredibly idealistic, but I would want to at least bring that up with our players as an option rather than just coming out and saying, ‘No way, I’m not going.’
–Q: So you could be standing up there and handing Trump a Warriors jersey?
–KERR: (Laughs.) You’re all of a sudden putting these images out there that are interesting. But I would want to have that discussion with our players.
And again, this might not even be a point because of how vocal we’ve all been in our opposition to Trump’s actions and some of his words. So we may not get the invitation. But it’s something I would absolutely entertain.
And like I said I think it’s important to respect the institution and it’s important to think about ways we can connect people and maybe that’s a symbolic gesture of some sort, I don’t know, but it’s worth a discussion, for sure.
–Q: Did you hear about the invitation from Bay Area Congresswomen Nancy Pelosi and Barbara Lee?
–KERR: I just heard about that yesterday. We got an email inviting us. Very flattering. I would imagine we’ll take them up on it. I don’t know we’ll see what our schedule looks like with our Washington trip next year, hopefully it all works out.
I would love to get an invitation to the White House. I’m glad we got one to Congress. Again, my thinking… I think it’s so important to move past the partisan stuff. That’s the biggest problem in our country right now. The partisan crap.
People using, in elections, using the shooting, the congressional shooting last week, saying this shooting may win us the election. I read that the other day. My God is that a disgusting thing to say. All the partisan crap, on both sides, is awful and it’s dividing our country. And I think we all have to start thinking about ways we can connect with one another and stop this divide.
And maybe sports is a good sort of forum to try to help that. And again, people who are listening might think that sounds hypocritical because I’ve been so critical of Trump, but what I’m saying is, this is not about partisan policy.
This is not about Democrat or Republican. It’s about communication. It’s about respect. It’s about character and morality. And those are things we have to really value as a country.
And both sides of the government, both parties, need to keep that in mind and somehow make that part of our system again.
I grew up– you remember this–I grew up in the ’70s and ’80s when Reagan and Tip O’Neill were best friends, Republican and Democrat and speaker of the house and the president, on both sides of the government, and yet they were best friends and they got stuff done. They worked together to do stuff that was best for the country. It would be nice to see that happen at some point…
It’s gotten so divided. We’re not accomplishing anything; we’re not getting anything done in country to actually further the country’s best interests. And instead we just attack each other to win elections and use fear to further individual agendas instead of actually focusing on what can help people.
* Kerr on Stephen Curry’s impact on the game:
-KERR: Everything we do is based on Steph. From the very beginning of this run, you know, Steph was the guy who started it.
Drafting Steph and building around him and then his development. and then obviously there’s been so many good payers that have been added… I feel like our foundation is built around not only his talent, but his character, his selflessness, his joy, his work ethic.
And then, literally our offensive system is built around the chaos that he creates for defenses. I’ve never seen a player who elicited so much of a defensive schematic response because of his ability to shoot from 30 feet and dribble around everybody.
Even Michael Jordan — like, people had the Jordan Rules — but nothing has ever been as dramatic as what I’ve seen from opponents’ defensive schemes as how they have to deal with Steph.
* Kerr on the strategic adjustments he made in the middle of the Finals vs. Cleveland:
-KERR: I thought Game 3 was revealing — that’s where we could really see their plan unfold. We could see it a little bit in Game 2. They made a huge adjustment in Game 2. Game 1, their pick-and-roll coverage was much different than Game 2. So Game 2 they started to do some different things.
The main thing that we saw was they were switching with Tristan Thompson, switching onto Steph with Tristan, and then blitzing with Kevin Love.
The whole idea really was there’s nothing they can do about KD, right? He’s 6-11, he can get his own shot. And if you devise a plan to stop KD now you’re letting everybody else free.
So I think they just said all right we’re just going to deal with Kevin, but we’re going to try to stop two guys, and one is Steph and two was Draymond.
I think it was really smart, because in many ways those two guys represent what we do and they are so integral to not only the structure of what we do but the emotion involved. Like, when Draymond is fully involved and invested offensively and getting passes in the pocket and throwing lob passes, it just energizes our team.
And same thing when Steph starts hitting those 30-footers, the crowd goes nuts, our team goes nuts and that just fuels us.
Their whole strategy really from Game 2 on was let’s do our best to take Steph and Draymond out of the offensive schemes as best we can. And I thought it was pretty effective, they did a good job.”
–Q: What was your counter-move to that?
-KERR: Our counter really came in Game 5, because Game 2 we didn’t have to adjust, we were scoring at will anyway, we did fine. Steph was playing great.
My only concern was that Draymond was not involved offensively; and again, I thought that was a smart strategy by Cleveland. So what they were doing was switching with him and then leaving him open to shoot jumpers and they figured they would live with his jumpers but they didn’t want his drives and his play-making.
The biggest adjustment we made really came in Game 5 when we just shifted everything to the side of the floor, instead of running high screens we ran side screens. And it changed their defensive shell behind the play. It changed the rotations. And they had grown really comfortable with their rotations and defensive scheme.
And it was Mike Brown’s suggestion on the plane back from Game 4. He said, what if we moved everything to the side? And we had done some of that last year in the Finals and had some success.
So we watched a lot of film; and we decided we really needed to shift everything over to the side. We kind of brought that screen-and-roll over to the side of the floor and we started putting multiple people in it just trying to confuse them and change things up. And it was a really effective look for us.
You probably noticed that we ran that same play about 20 times that game.
What happened in that game is it freed Draymond back. Probably remember he caught a couple passes and hit Andre for lobs. I thought even though the focus offensively was KD and he was dominant and Steph had a great game, I thought freeing up Draymond, which almost was an unintended consequence of our strategy change, I think that helped kind of energized Draymond and energized our team and got us going.
I thought we played a great game, but Cleveland was amazing. LeBron was amazing.
* Kerr on why he thought Draymond Green would be the Warriors most affected by the addition of Kevin Durant and why the Warriors don’t always rely on Stephen Curry in pick-and-roll action:
–KERR: Funny, before the season started, I told our staff that I thought Draymond was going to have the biggest adjustment to make. And he made it really easily. And I think a big part of that is the fact that he’s a point-forward at his core, offensively.
He handles the ball and he’s our leading assist guy. And all of a sudden he had another shooter and another weapon to work with. And I thought that was really important that we established early that Draymond was still going to be an integral part of the offense.
I was worried about that. I thought because KD was going to need the ball and Steph already had the ball, I was worried that Draymond would be a little left out of the offense and that would affect his overall game and his defense.
And in fact, it’s one of the things that’s I think important for our fans to understand because one of the things I get all the time is, ‘Why don’t you just put Steph in a screen-and-roll every play? Why don’t you give him the ball every play?’
And I think what people who follow our team closely understand is that the number of play-makers we have on our team is what makes us who we are. You know Shaun Livingston and Andre and Draymond and even Klay and our centers. I mean, drive-and-kick and passing and moving, it keeps everybody engaged.
But for the people who say, ‘Just give it to Steph every time and let him go,’ well now you’re alienating Draymond, you’re alienating Andre, you’re alienating Shaun. You’re basically telling them to be spot-up three-point shooters.
And now I think you’re losing a lot emotionally from what makes the team tick. And you’re taking away the energy that Draymond gets from being a play-maker and getting eight or 10 assists.
So that’s the balance we always try to find with our group–get everybody involved and energized. And it was especially important, to get back to Draymond, for him to establish that early in the year, not be left out of the offense, and I think he did a good job of that.
* Kerr on the Warriors’ big free pending agents:
–KERR: Who knows, we’ve got 10 free agents. Chances are not everybody’s going to be back.
But I think it’s pretty obvious that Steph and KD are coming back. And obviously Klay and Draymond are under contract. And then we’ve got a lot of key guys and we’ll see how it all plays out. We would love to have everybody back. You never know how this stuff works.
* Kerr on expecting to be better next season:
–KERR: I think we will definitely be better next year, from the experience of this year, from having KD have a year under his belt, comfort-level with his teammates and his surroundings, and being a champion.
I think guys like KD, there’s a weight lifted off their shoulders when they win their first one. I think we saw it with LeBron, when LeBron won his first title in Miami. To me, if you look at LeBron now compared to that first title, he’s dramatically better. Dramatically. And I think a big part of that is that weight being lifted, winning that first one.
I think we saw it with Michael Jordan. He broke through with his first title and it’s like you’re playing with house money now. You don’t have that pressure, nearly as much pressure, any more. I think you’ll see of that with KD, you’ll see some of that with our team. Winning two out of the last three titles, it’s an incredible accomplishment.
There’s two ways it can go, you can rest on your laurels or you can say let’s get greedy. And I know our guys, and they’re going to get greedy and they’re not going to stop working.
As far as being better, some of that will depend on how many of our guys are back, too, obviously. Andre’s been a huge part of what we do. Shaun’s been a huge part of what we do. We’d love to get those guys back.
Can we get our centers back? They all played a really important role in what we do–we had a nice cycle there–but obviously this is a superstar-driven team and we’ve got a great core and I think that core is going to be intact for the next few years and I think we’ve got a chance to get better from here.
* Kerr on how important it was for him personally to get back coaching in the playoffs:
–KERR: It was huge. From a selfish standpoint, I admit, from a personal standpoint, I needed it. I needed to be out there. I coached all 90 games in the regular season and in the preseason, not always comfortable and feeling great. But I coached ’em all and I felt good about that.
And then all of a sudden two games into the playoffs, all hell breaks loose, for whatever reason, and it was devastating to me. So it was good to feel better and to be able to come back and finish it,
I will always have that memory of celebrating Game 5, and it wouldn’t have been the same for me sitting in the locker room, watching on TV. It was a big deal for me to get back and I’m glad I was able to do it.”
–Q: Were there people close to you saying you shouldn’t come back so quickly?
–KERR: No, in fact my wife was leading the charge, she’s like, ‘You’ve got to get back, just go for it. You can do it.’ And Bob Myers really wanted me to be out there but he wanted to make sure I was OK physically. We talked every day.
There was about a week period, a week-long period, where I felt well enough to come back. So it was kind of during that break, after the San Antonio series, and I was getting a little better. We talked every single day about the pluses and minuses, should I do it and Bob was really encouraging, and ultimately said, ‘You’ve got to do whatever you think is best.’ And it just felt right.
–Q: You could’ve lost Game 2, when you came back, and been blamed a little bit. Did you think about that?
–KERR: No, you can’t think about that. I learned that as a player. The minute you start thinking about being the goat, you know, oh man, if I miss this shot,l they’re going to talk about me… Can’t worry about any of that. You just compete, you do your best, you lay it out there.
Same thing as a coach. It’s different, obviously, but the circumstances were kind of similar. I was putting myself out there, and if we had lost, that would’ve been a distraction. That was my main focus, was I didn’t want to be a distraction to the team.
It wasn’t so much like, I’m going to take the blame if we lose, it was more I didn’t want that to be the story and then all of the players are having to answer questions from the media about me and my return and all that stuff.
So ultimately I had to just say screw it, if I feel better, I should coach and if I don’t, I shouldn’t. Simple as that.
* Kerr on coaching through the pain, and the games being almost a relief:
–KERR: The games are just important to me, to my well-being. Just coaching and being involved. That’s what I love to do, so it’s very painful figuratively to sit out.
And so with chronic pain you’re kind of dealing with pain no matter what you’re doing, whether you’re sitting there doing nothing or coaching a game. That’s the difficult part of it. You’re kind of always dealing with the physical pain, so you have to figure out ways to get through it.
And one of the ways for me to get through it is to coach and to be involved and to be invested and it kind of takes you away from it a little bit. So that’s what’s really been important to me, since this began a couple years ago.
* Kerr on what he’ll be doing this summer to find a solution:
–KERR: It’s a journey and you don’t know when it’s going to end. And you kind of go from one step to the next. Unfortunately there’s no rot of set protocol like I would say in most illnesses where a doctor says well this is what you have and this is what you have to do. It’s not that simple.
So you’re constantly searching and learning and exploring things. And that’s the idea. I’ve had a lot of wonderful people help me and lead me in certain directions. I just keep going… I’m already pursuing some things early this summer; hopefully I can get some traction and build smoke momentum here and get back to feeling really good.
–Q: Any idea what happened that caused all the pain in the first round?
–KERR: Not really. Not really… There’s no clear answers to anything, But it’s good to have the time this summer to really pursue it and explore it.
–Q: So you will coach next season and into the future?
–KERR: That’s the plan. That’s what I aim to do. And I’m going into the offseason with Bob thinking that’s how this is going to go. And if things fall right, then everything will work out and I’m confident that that will happen. But I still have some work to do and things to pursue.
