While Steve Kerr was the coach that led the Golden State Warriors to their dynastic success in the 2010s, there is agreement among the NBA community that Kerr would not have been able to do so without Mark Jackson.
Mark Jackson was the coach of the Golden State Warriors when they drafted Stephen Curry, Klay Thompson, and Draymond Green, and helped develop them into the players that they are today.
In 2013, Stephen Curry and Mark Jackson were involved in a commercial for the NBA on ESPN. As part of the commercial, Curry and Jackson boarded an RV, where Curry found Mark Jackson’s old notebooks with his draft notes.
Curry was curious to see Jackson’s draft notes for him but was disappointed to see that Jackson thought he was too small, too slow, and would have a career in Turkey rather than the NBA.
Swipe to the second slide below to see the commercial.
“Too short. Too slow. With luck, maybe a career in Turkey.”
The joke is also a reference to the low expectations many analysts and teams had of Stephen Curry coming into the league.
While Curry had impressed many during his stint at Davidson, there were those who felt that Curry’s over-reliance on the three-point shot and his smaller stature would hold him back from success. Curry has proven many of those people wrong. But in reality, Mark Jackson was not one of those people.
Jackson always had a lot of faith in Stephen Curry. In fact, in 2013, before the Warriors had any success, Jackson dubbed Curry and Klay Thompson the greatest shooting backcourt of all time.
And since then, Jackson has been proven right, as the duo along with Draymond Green helped lead the Warriors to 5 consecutive NBA Finals, and 3 NBA championship wins.
