Warriors are winners even without Kerr
Golden State missing leader, but not guidance
SALT LAKE CITY — Mike Brown led the Warriors’ practice at Vivint Smart Home Arena on Friday, he spoke to the media, set the schedule, and basically did everything he has been doing for the last two weeks in Steve Kerr’s absence.
And with each passing day, game and series, while the Warriors keep winning, their coaching situation is clarifying itself in a way they cannot control:
As Kerr continues to seek new treatment for his chronic head and neck pain and keeps in touch by phone, he is likelier and likelier to miss not only the rest of this second-round series but the rest of the Warriors’ postseason run.
Kerr has missed the Warriors’ last four playoff games — the last two of the Portland series and the first two of this one — and he is not with the team and will also miss Saturday’s Game 3 and Monday’s Game 4 here in Utah.
With all that in mind, after practice I asked Warriors general manager Bob Myers, one of Kerr’s best friends, if the team needs to proceed as if Kerr will not be back for the rest of the playoffs. “I said this to the team, we all have to kind of decide how to process that part ourselves,” Myers said. “Because he still could — I don’t want to mislead people — but the possibility of him coming back still exists.
“But that is different than relying on it. You can have that optimism, we all can have that hope. But reliance on it, I think, is something nobody’s doing at this point. Nor should they.”
Hope for a change in Kerr’s health and a quick return. But brace for him to be out past June.
Yes, Kerr could find an instant remedy and begin to feel better at any day and any time, and that of course is what we all wish for him — whether or not that leads to an instant return to the sidelines for the NBA Finals or whenever.
But there are no indications that Kerr is any nearer now to a return than he was two weeks ago, when he had to step away. And though Myers won’t say the exact words, the Warriors and Kerr have essentially decided that Brown will coach the rest of this series, at the very least.
I asked Myers: When you talk with Kerr, do you ask or can you tell how close he is to coming back?
“You know, I can’t even say that,” said Myers, who had just talked to Kerr before Friday’s workout. “I can’t say better one day or the next right now. I’m just kind of waiting to be able to say that — I think he is, too — to be able to say it’s getting better or it’s close. That’d be great.
“But I can’t say it right now.”
This is exactly the way the Warriors and Kerr should treat this —– there is no mad rush to get Kerr back on the sidelines because the real urgency is just to get his life right, to let him experience a series of days free of pain and the worry that the pain might never go away.
Myers said it’s a tribute to Kerr that when he sees Warriors fans, they express hope and love for Kerr, not anxiety over the team.
With Warriors management, the players and fans, there is also the knowledge that the team is in calm and capable hands, because Brown has coached through many playoff series and also has Kerr’s plans and system ingrained.
“Everything we do, basically we run it by him,” Brown said.