Gentry and Kerr rivals on court, close off it
They’re both NBA head coaches who ratchet up the tempo, devise offensive schemes around movement and spacing, love to laugh and recognize that there are matters bigger than basketball.
However, the bond that Steve Kerr and Alvin Gentry share goes far beyond their similarities. It is rooted in mutual respect. As they endured coaching changes and won an NBA title together, Kerr and Gentry came to see in each other the traits they value most: loyalty, trust, humility.
Now, as his Warriors try to build off a 1-0 series lead over Gentry’s Pelicans in the second round of the playoffs, Kerr knows that their friendship will persist long after one of their teams reaches the Western Conference finals. A decade removed from passing over
Gentry for a promotion, Kerr considers him one of his closest confidants.
“He’s just a really good dude,” Kerr said of Gentry. “He’s got a great sense of humor. He’s really fun to be around. He gets along with everybody. He’s one of those guys that kind of ties everyone together with his humor. So, no matter who you are, you feel good just being around him.”
Kerr was a 34-year-old reserve guard for the Spurs when San Antonio head coach Gregg Popovich hired Gentry as an assistant in the summer of 2000. By the time Gentry left only a couple of weeks later to take the Clippers’ headcoaching job, he had barely gotten the chance to exchange pleasantries with Kerr.
It wasn’t until June 2007, when Kerr left his broadcasting gig with TNT to become the Suns’ general manager, that he finally started to know Gentry — fresh off his third season as a Phoenix assistant under Mike D’Antoni — on a personal level. With D’Antoni leading the way, the Suns had used a run-andgun system to reach two conference finals and one conference semifinal.
In 2007-08, as the Suns won 55 regular-season games to secure the No. 6 seed in the playoffs, Kerr became frustrated with D’Antoni’s apparent reluctance to make defense a priority. Tensions heightened when Phoenix was
ousted in the first round by the Spurs. Less than two weeks after Sports Illustrated reported that D’Antoni was looking for a new place to coach, he signed a four-year, $24 million contract with the Knicks.
Gentry seemed a logical replacement. A former head coach with the Heat, Pistons and Clippers, he already had the respect of a locker room that boasted Amar’e Stoudemire, Steve Nash and Shaquille O’Neal. It also didn’t hurt that Gentry, an offensive guru in his own right, would continue to implement the up-tempo style that had transformed the Suns into a contender.
But even though Phoenix had won 65 percent of its games in its five seasons with D’Antoni, Kerr thought it needed a philosophical makeover. His former teammate in San Antonio, Terry Porter, was hired to instill a defensive identity.
Eager not to move his family, Gentry accepted an assistant position on Porter’s staff. Not once did he complain to Kerr about not seriously being considered for the top job.
“It was my mistake,” Kerr said. “I felt like we needed a shift, and I was mistaken. We would have been better off keeping a similar course with Alvin.”
Kerr hadn’t anticipated Porter overhauling the offensive system that had been foundational to the Suns’ success. Intent on featuring O’Neal, who had been acquired four months earlier in a trade with Miami, Porter slowed the pace and called for repeated passes to the big man in the post.
Such changes irked players who had embraced D’Antoni’s pace-and-space style. After Phoenix stumbled into the All-Star break in a 6-10 rut, Kerr fired Porter and made Gentry the interim head coach. The Suns immediately returned to their free-flowing ways and only narrowly missed the playoffs.
It wasn’t long before Kerr traded O’Neal to Cleveland, signed Channing Frye — a floor-spacing big man adept at pushing the tempo — and named Gentry the full-time head coach. Considered by some on the verge of a rebuild, Phoenix blossomed into the league’s biggest surprise, winning 54 regular-season games before it fell to the Lakers in the conference finals.
Less than three weeks after the Suns’ Game 6 loss to Los Angeles, Kerr resigned to return to broadcasting and spend more time with his family. Reports have suggested that Phoenix owner Robert Sarver’s refusal to give Gentry a contract extension that offseason factored into Kerr’s decision to step away.
“Steve and Alvin are really close,” said Warriors player-development coach Bruce Fraser, who was a Suns scout during Kerr’s time in Phoenix. “I think they understand each other on a deep level because they value the same things. They both want players to enjoy the process every day, and they’re capable of great strategy.”
In May 2014, after he agreed to become Golden State’s head coach, Kerr’s
first call was to ask Gentry to be his No. 2. During those first few months in Oakland, Kerr — a first-time coach — leaned heavily on Gentry to install his system.
Over the previous decade, as he gathered research in hopes of someday leading his own team, Kerr had developed clear ideas for how he wanted his offense to look. It was Gentry who made sure those concepts could be executed.
Often in games, Gentry reminded Kerr when to call for a timeout or draw up a certain play. Their collaborative approach trickled down to a team that improved by 16 wins from the previous season and, ultimately, won the franchise’s first NBA title in 40 years.
“Steve deserves all of the credit, really,” said Gentry, who parlayed that memorable 2014-15 season with the Warriors into the Pelicans’ head-coaching job. “He came in here, he took the reins, and he did a great job of making guys believe everything that we were going to do that year.”
Humor is at the core of Kerr’s friendship with Gentry. During their lone season coaching together, Kerr and Gentry often put up slide shows in video review poking fun at each other. After Golden State beat San Antonio in the first round to advance to face New Orleans, Kerr joked to reporters that, “Fortunately, Alvin Gentry doesn’t really know what he’s doing.”
Even in the wake of the Warriors’ Game 1 beat-down of the Pelicans on Saturday, when the two embraced at midcourt, Kerr whispered something in Gentry’s ear. Gentry shook his head slightly and chuckled.