Kerr speaks on Thompson’s injury, and Warriors getting back ‘in the mix’
It happened minutes after Steve Kerr showed up at Chase Center ready to make a draft pick for which he and the rest of the Warriors had spent months preparing. “Bob gets a call,” he said, “and he just looks like he’s seen a ghost.”
That afternoon, Nov. 18, during a pickup game in Los Angeles, Klay Thompson suffered a right Achilles tendon tear that will force him to miss his second straight season. His agent, Greg Lawrence, called Warriors general manager Bob Myers, and Myers relayed the information to the rest of the staff assembled in the team’s draft night “war room” in San Francisco.
“We were all just in shock,” Kerr told me in a phone interview. “Once we got the news, we got on the phone with Klay and talked to him for 5 or 10 minutes. As you might expect, he was devastated — as were all of us.”
Suddenly, with the team on the brink of a pivotal offseason, everything changed. That night they drafted James Wiseman, a 7-foot center bursting with potential, with the No. 2 pick. Within 24 hours, owner Joe Lacob signed off on trading for Kelly Oubre Jr., adding a $14 million contract to one of the most expensive payrolls in the NBA. Within a few more days, Myers filled out the rest of the roster with free agents Kent Bazemore and Brad Wanamaker.
None of that is likely enough to turn the Warriors into a title contender — as they were widely considered with a healthy Thompson — but they will be better than their 15-50 record last season. This week, Kerr talked to me about Thompson’s latest setback, Wiseman’s potential and his expectations for the season.
This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity and brevity.
QWhat was going through your mind when you heard about Klay’s injury?
AVery few people I know have ever gone through what Klay is going through right now. It’s hard for me to relate and we all know how much Klay loves basketball. So it’s just, it’s just brutal.
It’s one of the saddest injuries that I’ve ever been around.
QThis has got to be gutting for you as a coach, too.
AKlay is one of the very best two-way players in the NBA. Everybody knows about his shooting and his scoring, but his defense over the years has been one of the keys to our championships. Guarding the ball, whether it’s (James) Harden or Kyrie (Irving) or LeBron (James) in the playoffs. Switching from Kyrie onto Kevin Love and us not having to double — nobody does that. Looking to this season, we factored all that into what we were looking to do as a staff, what we’re looking to implement. And offensively all of his movement and the floor spacing. What he and Steph both do with their shooting, both on and off ball, it’s been the basis of everything we’ve done offensively over the years. So really, really devastating. Obviously first and foremost for Klay, but for us too as an organization and as a staff. So now we got to readjust the plans and figure out what we’re going to do.
QYou went ahead and drafted James Wiseman at No. 2, Kelly Oubre always made sense as a trade exception target given his salary. As far as roster construction, did the injury really change anything?
AIt 100% triggered the Oubre trade. I’m not sure we were going to use the TPE if Klay had been healthy. It was more likely that we would have used the mid-level exception, maybe split it up. That’s what we were talking about anyway. We’re looking at a very interesting team that has a chance to be elite defensively. We’ve got tremendous length across the starting lineup and it really gives us a lot of flexibility to switch, to try some different things defensively, to be aggressive and trap, maybe do some things we haven’t done as much of over the years.
QGoing back to Joe signing off on the Oubre trade, did that provide a needed boost of morale to the organization?
AOh, definitely boosted morale. Everybody was so down with Klay’s injury so to be able to add Kelly so quickly was definitely a boost for all of us. And it was a reminder that Joe never fails to improve the team at any cost. He’s one of the best owners in the league because of his commitment to winning, his vision, and there’s no question where he stands year after year.
QLast year you told me you got a sense in training camp that it was going to be a rebuilding year. I know it’s not training camp yet, but what are your expectations for the season?
AWe want to be a playoff team and constantly grow and get better because we’re so new to each other. We’re fully aware of how strong the West is, and not just at the top. There’s never a night off so we got our hands full. But we have enough to be in the mix. If we can do that and get some better fortune along the way than we’ve had over the last year-and-a-half, we have a chance to make some noise.