Better than ever, Warriors are having fun
Oakland coach says last year he was wrong to preach how hard it was going to be
OAKLAND, CALIF. — Steve Kerr, the coach of the Golden State Warriors of Oakland, decided at the start of last season to emphasize to his players just how much they would need to grind to reach a fourth straight NBA finals. He painted a fairly bleak picture of the road ahead, drawing on his own experiences as a player with the Chicago Bulls to illustrate the challenges.
His intentions were good. He wanted to guard against complacency. He wanted his team to be mentally prepared. But in hindsight, he said, it was probably a big mistake.
“This year, we haven’t talked about that at all,” Kerr said. “We’re just talking more about enjoying the process, enjoying every day, every game.”
The Warriors definitely appear to be having more fun this season. Stephen Curry had fun scoring 51 points in a win against the Washington Wizards last week. Kevin Durant had fun erupting for 41 in a win against the Knicks two days later. And Klay Thompson had fun setting an NBA record with 14 3-pointers in a win against the Bulls on Monday.
“Couldn’t have asked for a better start,” Thompson said.
Here is the unfortunate reality for the rest of the league: If the Warriors were slightly miserable last season, they still went on to a win a second straight championship, and their third in four years. So what can we expect from them now that they are actually enjoying themselves?
“We’re just trying to give our fans a show, man,” Thompson said.
The Warriors have shown flashes of unprecedented brilliance already this season, running their record to 8-1 with a 131-121 win against the New Orleans Pelicans on Wednesday night. Entering Thursday, Oakland led the league in scoring, assists, field-goal percentage, 3-point shooting, high-fives and highlights. They could be better than ever, as preposterous as that sounds.
The players, for their part, seemed aware of the possibilities even before the start of training camp. Andre Iguodala, in an interview over the summer, made a bold prediction.
“This year is going to be better than last year,” he said. “Last year was rough.”
These are first-world problems, but rough for Oakland meant dealing with the constant and often self-imposed pressure of repeating as champions. Rough meant a long trip to China for pre-season games, which wore them out. (“I know a couple guys told us Game 1 felt like Game 41,” Kerr said.) Rough meant coping with injuries to stars like Curry and Durant and seldom feeling quite complete. Rough meant closing the regular season with a thud, losing 10 of their final 17 games.
“We went into the season with the wrong mindset,” Draymond Green said, adding: “Every team is going through an 82-game grind. But as opposed to embracing it, we were kind of like, ‘Oh, here we are. Let’s get through it and get to the playoffs.’ And it felt that way.”
The process of the regular season, Green said, should have been the fun part. Instead, he said, the Warriors tried to skip past it and then “flip the switch” in the playoffs, which, to be fair, they did. But still, as Green put it: “That’s no fun.”
There were other obstacles, too, which Iguodala described as “family business.” He did not elaborate.
“But last year was tough,” he said. “Mentally tough. People don’t know how hard it is to repeat. But now we understand the grind of going through it, and I think we learned from it.”
The team, Kerr said, has also been energized this season by a group of young players like Damian Jones, Alfonzo McKinnie and Jacob Evans.
“The gym just tends to have more energy when you’ve got a bunch of guys who are all hungry and working on their game,” Kerr said.
Before Wednesday’s game against the Pelicans, Kerr anticipated hiccups, saying The Warriors were facing a tough foe.