Test for Warriors
Steve Kerr hopes the best version of his team shows up.
Ninety-eight games into the season, Warriors coach Steve Kerr has a tough time deciphering which version of his team will show up any given night.
Will it be the selfless, mindful group that rolled through the 2017 playoffs, or will it be the sloppy crew that slogged through perhaps the most underwhelming 58-win season in NBA history?
Plenty of nights, both iterations make an appearance. In Saturday’s Game 6 win over the Rockets in the Western Conference finals, Golden State dug a 17-point hole in the first quarter, only to storm back for a 29-point rout.
“If you have any idea, please let me know,” Kerr said when asked postgame to explain why the Warriors remain so uneven. “I have no clue why our team is like this, but this is kind of what we do. We’re up and down.”
That the Warriors are a bit of a mystery adds another layer of intrigue to their Game 7 matchup Monday with the Rockets. They tend to need a threat to play their best, but even the highest of stakes — an elimination game, for example — sometimes aren’t enough for Golden State to open with focus.
As they prepare for arguably their biggest outing since Game 7 of the 2016 NBA Finals, the
WARRIORS Warriors know they must be the version of themselves that outscored the Rockets 64-25 in the second half Saturday, not the one that let those same Rockets ring up 39 first-quarter points. Regardless of whether Chris Paul (right hamstring strain) is cleared to play, the Rockets will benefit from a raucous crowd desperate to see the home team reach its first Finals since 1995.
“We’ve just got to be laser focused from the jump,” Stephen Curry said after Game 6. “I guarantee if we start the game out like we did tonight and they jump out to the lead, it’s going to be 10 times harder to make it a game. So, for us, that’s our challenge: Have the same mentality we had for the last 36 minutes of tonight and bring that from the jump in Game 7.”
Over the past seven months, as Golden State repeatedly succumbed to complacency, Kerr tried to keep his team’s issues in perspective. Chasing their third NBA title in four years, the Warriors were having trouble getting up for every game.
Kerr could relate because he experienced a similar situation in 1997-98 as a reserve guard with the Chicago Bulls. Coming off its second straight NBA title, Chicago looked far more human as it plodded through a 62-win regular season. But it was soon forgotten as the Bulls proceeded to hoist their third consecutive Larry O’Brien trophy.
With that in mind, Kerr long fought against his inclination this season to snap on his players. He followed assistant coach Ron Adams’ advice and waited for Golden State to start playing like a championship team.
As the problems that plagued the Warriors in October and November persisted into the spring, it became harder for Kerr to stay composed. In early April, after watching his team sleepwalk through a 20-point loss at Indiana, Kerr unleashed a verbal tirade on his players before publicly questioning their effort.
Connor Letourneau is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer