When Steve Kerr took over as the head coach of the Golden State Warriors in 2014, there were a lot of questions raised about the hire. Kerr had played 15 seasons and won 5 titles in the NBA, but he had no coaching experience of any kind in the league. His only non-playing role in the NBA at the time was as the General Manager of the Phoenix Suns from 2007 to 2010, and he didn’t do a particularly great job either.
Any and all doubts regarding Kerr’s coaching ability were dispelled in his first season itself, as he led the team to 67 wins, which was a franchise record. The team was doing well before Kerr took over, as they had won 51 games the year prior, but he unlocked their full potential with a motion offense and turned them into a powerhouse.
Draymond Green Reveals That The Warriors Thought Steve Kerr Was Out Of His Mind
That motion offense that Kerr implemented was something very new for the Warriors, however, as they had relied heavily on the pick-and-roll prior to that. Draymond Green, who was one of the biggest benefactors of Kerr’s hiring as he became a full-time starter in 2014, spoke on what the players thought about Kerr in their first training camp during a recent episode of the ‘Checc-N-In’ podcast.
via Caffeine (starts at 35:55 mark):
“When Steve Kerr took over the job, I remember the first training camp, he’s like, ‘ball movement, cut, stop standing and waiting for the ball.’ I’ll catch the ball at the top of the key, Steph on the wing, and he’s like, ‘Steph, cut’ and it’s like, ‘No, dude, I’m supposed to pass the ball to Steph right here.’ And he said, ‘Pass the ball and move without the ball, the ball will find the hands of the people that are supposed to get the shots.’”
“We all thought he was out of his mind. And then as we started to do it, then you figure it out and you like, ‘Yo, this is actually pretty incredible.’ Like, it’s ball moving, ball moving. Ball moving. Screen roll, it’s ball moving, ball moving. ball moving. There goes the mismatch, but nobody’s really standing. And that’s kind of where all this flow offense and all this stuff came.”
It would have been such a drastic change for the team, so it’s not a surprise that they felt Kerr was out of his mind for trying something so different. They soon found out that it worked, and the Warriors went on to have tremendous success thanks to it. They have now won 4 titles in the Kerr era, and you wouldn’t put it past them to add to that tally.
During this episode, Green also spoke about Kerr’s predecessor Mark Jackson, who was fired despite leading the team to the playoffs in 2013 and 2014. He stated how they were all crushed by the decision, but the front office made the right call, as Kerr has taken them to heights that Jackson probably wouldn’t have been able to.
