Prepared to play on without Kerr
Coach will be missed during his absence, but veteran team has been through it before
OAKLAND — They wish they didn’t have experience with anything like this, but they do.
The Warriors players and staffers wish they never even had to contemplate a day, or a game, or a playoff series without Steve Kerr’s voice, wit, insight and leadership running through every bit of it.
But Kerr was absent again for Saturday’s practice (after missing Games 3 and 4 of the first-round sweep over Portland) during this long layoff between playoff rounds while he seeks a solution for his persistent, piercing pain, and the Warriors absolutely miss him.
And maybe most importantly: They have dealt with this loss before, just last season, when Kerr missed most of training camp and the first 43 regular-season games dealing with the same issues that developed after he suffered a spinal-fluid leak.
Last season, assistant Luke Walton stepped in as the interim coach, the Warriors bonded together and figured out how to handle it, raced off to a 39-4 record, and then Kerr came back in January.
This time, veteran assistant
Mike Brown — a threetime former NBA head coach brought in as the Warriors’ top assistant after Walton took the Lakers’ top job — has taken the reins in the interim.
And once again the rest of the Warriors organization has joined together to keep everything steady while they wait and hope for another Kerr return.
“We all grew last year when Steve went out,” said assistant coach Bruce Fraser, one of Kerr’s best friends. “So we know it a little bit better. Doesn’t mean we don’t miss him. We miss his voice and his intellect. …
“If you’re going to take the glass-half-full take on it, we all grew from last year’s experience. And Mike’s been in that chair and is really good at it. And we get to have Steve’s voice along with it all.
“But you can never replace his absence.”
The Warriors have a way they do things, which was all drawn up and installed by Kerr when he arrived in 2014, and Brown has made sure to maintain that course — just as Walton did last season — by talking to Kerr every day and working through Kerr’s game plan.
Notably, Brown said that Kerr made a brief appearance at the coaches’ meeting on Friday to help set the framework for the next series.
But this is the playoffs, not the early months of the regular season, and I can see a different kind of urgency this time, starting with a veteran staff that already knows where and how to support Brown … because it already did it once with Walton.
And if there’s a tangible difference in the way the Warriors have handled this new Kerr absence, it’s how swiftly their top players have asserted their leadership — and acknowledged their increased responsibility — with Kerr sidelined.
Boiled down: Stephen Curry is taking more control of the offense, Draymond Green is always the defensive bellwether, and Andre Iguodala is the veteran who oversees everything.
It makes sense. They’re great and smart players fully invested by Kerr, and if anybody knows what Kerr would want and what Brown needs from them, it’s them.
Who were the loudest voices telling the team to keep things in focus even when the Warriors stormed to a huge early lead over Portland in Game 4? Green and Iguodala.
Who was calling the plays to make sure the ball moved and the right players got it in rhythm? Curry.
“I thought Steph did a really good job of picking parts of the game,” Iguodala said this week when asked about filling in the Kerr void, “where, ‘We’re going to get a play for (Kevin Durant) right here,’ ‘Make sure Klay gets his shot,’ or ‘I’m going to take over for three possessions right here.’ K.D. didn’t get as many attempts, but the attempts he did get, Steph was calling those plays, making sure we were keeping in rhythm.”
When I asked Curry about this Saturday, he immediately agreed that the Warriors’ veteran players understand the stakes and the responsibility involved.
“It’s huge, because at the end of the day we know how to be successful,” Curry said. “When we’re playing well, how we can make that happen — it’s moving the ball, moving bodies, setting screens for each other, getting the pace the way we want it. …
“We need (Kerr’s) voice every once in a while for sure to make those adjustments and be a coach and do what’s he’s supposed to do. … But when I’m out there on the floor, it’s not like I’m looking over at Coach Kerr every second, like, ‘What do I do now?’ The principles are set in stone of how we need to play, and it’s my job to execute them.”
And this time around, Kerr has been more present than he was during his sabbatical last season. The Warriors players don’t know if that will continue, or if Kerr will find a remedy and jump right back into coaching.
But any little bit of Kerr makes the Warriors better.
“Having gone through that process last year, it’s definitely easier in our sense just to continue things as they are and try our best to just go out and focus on playing,” Curry said. “And obviously we want him to get back as fast as he can and rejoin us on a day-to-day basis.”
Until then, the Warriors keep going, with an interim coach and a bunch of veteran players and coaches who have been through this before and understand exactly what’s missing and what they have to do to try to make up for it.