כשסטיב קאר נשאל שלשום על למה האורות בחדר מלונו מוארים ב-3 וב-4 בבוקר, הוא ענה: "אני מצטער לאכזב אתכם. אבל אני בן 49, וב-3 לפנות בוקר אני מתעורר להשתנת לילה ראשונה, וב-4:30 להשתנת הלילה השנייה!".

אני לא מבין מה הבושה בלהיות כל כך מוכן לכל משחק.

אבל אח"כ הוא הודה: כשהייתי משדר משחק, הייתי נירדם אחרי משחק תוך 5 דקות. היום אני לא יכול להירדם. אני שואל את עצמי איזה תרגיל הייתי צריך להריץ כאן ואיזה תרגיל הייתי צריך להריץ שם. אבל אני מתחיל להירגע. מתחיל להרגיש יותר נינוח במושבי כמאמן. אני ישן טוב יותר, ואני לא עושה אנאליסיס משך כל הלילה יותר. למעשה, אני מתחיל ליהנות יותר ויותר מכל העסק!".

כמובן שזה עוזר כשיש לך סטפן קרי וקייל תומפסון להרגעת העצבים.

לי עושה רושם שהקבוצה הזאת עם המאמן הזה היא בדרך לצעוד את הצעד האחרון, הצד שיוביל אותה לאליפות המערב, ואליפות ה-NBA. אילו סובבו את ידי עד שאשמיע שם של קבוצה, נכון לרגע זה הייתי קורא בשמה של הווריורס כמועמדת מס' 1 שלי לאליפות.

ההתקפה של הקבוצה שהיתה כה חנוקה תחת מרק ג'קסון נראית היום משוחררת וחופשייה, וההגנה שהיה חלקה החלש השתפרה ללא היכר.

אנדרו בוגוט אמר: "מה שאני אוהב אצלו היא העובדה שהוא לא מתגאה בנצחונות אלא מדבר על איבודי הכדור. הוא מבקש שכל אחד יהיה מוכן למלא את תפידו ויידע בדיוק מה שמצופה ממנו. אנחנו שומעים זאת ממנו ויודעים שהוא את חלקו עשה: אימוניו הם הכי מאורגנים שאי-פעם עברתי. כל דקה רשומה ונחשבת. אין ביזבוזי זמן. הכל עובד כשעון. הוא יודע את ה-STUFF שלו וזה ברור בכל משפט שהוא אומר. שום דבר לא עובר באימון או במשחק מבלי שהוא  יראה או ישים לב אליו. הוא פשוט בתוך העניינים יו8תר מכל מאמן אחר שהתאמנתי תחתיו".

סטפן קרי מוסיף: "אין כל ביזבוז באימונים. הכל מאורגן ולכל דבר ישנה מטרה: הוצאת כדור תחת סלנו. תחת סל היריב. מצבי סוף משחק. דברים שמאמנים אחרים מדברים עליהם פעם אחת ומתאמנים פעם אחת. אצלו זה 'שוב ושוב' עד שהוא מרגיש מסופק!".

כמובן ששני עוזרי מאמן כאלבין גנטרי, וגורו ההגנה רון אדאמס רק עוזרים. למעשה אני מדרגם כשני עוזרי המאמן הטובים ביותר בכל ה-NBA!

החשש הגדול היה כיצד יתקבל סטיב קאר, הלבן שגדל בבית עשיר, בן טובים שקיבל 25 מיליון לאמן את הווריורס

Yet the player who remains at the center and who was among the many close with Jackson, point guard Stephen Curry, is not only playing at a high-level but looking to become a two-way player like never before. His backcourt mate, shooting guard Klay Thompson, is the NBA's early surprise story with how he broke out in the wake of signing a four-year, $70 million extension. What's more, Kerr hasn't exactly taken the keys to this high-octane car and hit cruise control.

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From starting young Harrison Barnes over veteran Andre Iguodala at small forward to sounding as if he'll do the same at power forward with Draymond Green even when David Lee is healthy, he's making the kinds of decisions that inevitably came with immediate risk. Yet here they are, playing like he may have thought possible while calling Warriors games courtside last season and getting those competitive juices that were so dormant flowing again.

"I'm alive," Kerr said as he discussed his new challenge. "I love feeling this way. I love the competition. I love being part of the group. I love trying to build something together.

"The intensity — you can't even come close to matching. On TV, you're talking about what somebody else is doing. Now we're talking about what we're doing. So we're in the fight, and that's what makes it fun."

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For all the focus on Kerr's time at TNT, his résumé is impressive. He was a five-time champion as a player, learning from Phil Jackson and Gregg Popovich, and he ran the Phoenix Suns' front office on the back end of their Seven-Seconds-or-Less era. The intrigue going forward is seeing how all of those experiences influence the style with which he coaches and how his team plays.

To hear Bogut tell it, it's the kind of Jackson-Popovich hybrid approach that the Warriors hoped they'd see when they were able to woo him away from Jackson's New York Knicks during the summer. Like both of the legendary coaches, he's candid both publicly and privately in ways that are so rare in today's cliché-filled game. There's an intensity that was nowhere to be found when he was on TV in that past life, and a confidence in his basketball beliefs that has allowed him to make more of a mark than most would have expected at this early juncture.

Bogut, who was widely known to be less fond of the previous regime than most of his teammates, said he became of fan of Kerr's during training camp when he made the bold move of getting back to the basics.

"In training camp, we did basic fundamentals," Bogut said. "We did dribbling drills. We did pivot drills. We did jump-stop drills. I'm talking like grade-school stuff. And some guys thought it was stupid, but I think it's just that attention to detail. He knew last season that we were horrible at turning the ball over, so he was all about, 'If you're double-teamed, do a jump-stop, get to your pivots.' We actually do that stuff. It's monotonous to some guys, because you're a pro and you're like, 'Holy (expletive), this is lame.' But I knew right away that he didn't care what guys thought. He was like, 'We're going to do this.' "

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That approach extended past training camp and into the regular season, too.

"Last season, we didn't practice a lot," Bogut said. "Every coach is different, and coach Jackson liked us to be fresh for games and have fresh legs. We came in, did what we needed, scouted and got out of there. (Now) we're doing a little more with coach (Kerr). Like I said, the fundamental stuff … That worked for us last season. This season, they're different. They want to make sure we stay on the fundamentals and that kind of stuff."

Thursday night was about more than fundamentals, though.

As fellow analyst-turned-NBA coach Doc Rivers of the Clippers pointed out, there's a pre-Kerr history between those two teams that made it hard to know just how much credit should go his way yet. There's a roster that is even deeper than before, too, with general manager Bob Myers having added veterans guards Leandro Barbosa and Shaun Livingston during the summer and big men Festus Ezeli and Bogut back from injury-riddled campaigns to bolster the frontcourt.

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"I think that (Kerr) has changed them, but I think after losing last year, they're coming with anger," said Rivers, whose team beat the Bogut-less Warriors in seven games in the first round of the playoffs last season when the big man was out with a rib injury. "So you've got to give Steve some credit, but I don't want to take credit away from Mark (Jackson) or anyone else. They came here to kick our butts."

The beauty of it all, it seems, is that Kerr is far more consumed with getting wins than he is with getting credit. The West, as he would have opined had he stayed in the television world, is so deep that simply getting into the playoffs remains the primary goal. That's the mission at the moment, with the side goal of getting some sleep along the way. Happiness, as Kerr knows so well from living his life in this league, can be a fleeting emotion during the course of an NBA season.

"The good thing is we've got really high character people on our team," Kerr said after the win over the Clippers. "These guys are committed to winning, committed to each other. It doesn't mean they're always going to be happy, but they're going to continue to pull together and do what's necessary to win…We're 4-0, but how much better can we get? I think they all know we can get better."

Toughness drives Warriors coach Steve Kerr

By Diamond Leung

dleung@bayareanewsgroup.com

Posted:   11/03/2014 11:29:54 AM PST1 Comment | Updated:   28 days ago

OAKLAND — Warriors coach Steve Kerr smiles as he peels away at his nice-guy image, reciting a line his wife half-jokingly uses to describe him around the house.

 

"Beware the fury of a patient man," the even-keeled Kerr said, laughing about occasionally losing his temper.

 

Bubbling inside the rookie coach is a toughness of character that Warriors staff members who know him best believe will enable success as he has taken over for Mark Jackson on the bench with a 3-0 record heading into Wednesday's game against the rival Los Angeles Clippers.

Golden State Warriors head coach Steve Kerr gives instructions to his players against the Los Angeles Clippers in the second half of a a NBA preseason game

Golden State Warriors head coach Steve Kerr gives instructions to his players against the Los Angeles Clippers in the second half of a a NBA preseason game at Oracle Arena in Oakland, Calif., on Tuesday, Oct. 21, 2014. (Ray Chavez/Bay Area News Group) ( RAY CHAVEZ )

 

It's a quality the 49-year-old Kerr revealed when as a skinny 6-foot-3 shooting guard he won three championships with the Chicago Bulls playing for Phil Jackson and two with the San Antonio Spurs under Gregg Popovich. Lacking the athleticism to dunk and barely recruited before landing at the University of Arizona, Kerr scraped together a 15-year NBA playing career and worked to become the most accurate 3-point shooter in league history. He once got into a fistfight in practice with Michael Jordan and earned so much respect for it that the following season his famous teammate passed to him for the championship-clinching shot.

 

"The first time I played in the NBA, I was alarmed by the speed," Kerr said. "The first time I was a broadcaster for TNT, I didn't know which monitor to look at. You've got to feel it."

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So after leaving television to accept a five-year coaching contract worth up to $25 million, Kerr flew as far as Melbourne, Australia, to dine with center Andrew Bogut and his girlfriend, traveled to Miami to sit with forward Harrison Barnes and his agent, and played rounds of golf with Stephen Curry.

 

The All-Star Curry was among the players to disagree with Jackson's dismissal in May after back-to-back playoff appearances, but he has repeatedly said Kerr — the son of university educators — did his homework and was detail-oriented in preparing for the job ahead.

 

Secure in his basketball intellect, Kerr thirsted for more knowledge and surrounded himself with assistant coaches — Alvin Gentry and Ron Adams — who could provide advice culled from the decades of NBA coaching experience he lacked. Kerr proceeded to go to Las Vegas to lead the Warriors' summer league team, a task often left to an assistant.

It was then that Kerr discovered he didn't know how to effectively use a white board.

"I had a bunch of plays in my head, but I didn't communicate them very well," Kerr said. "And so over a two-week stretch in Vegas, I figured out, 'Oh man, I better practice this stuff.' So I spent the rest of the summer literally drawing up plays at the office."

More recently, the sight of a white board on the wall of Kerr's office filled with philosophies and X's and O's grabbed the attention of general manager Bob Myers, who was impressed by the preparation work. Kerr and Gentry had collaborated to draw up plays for after-timeout, buzzer-beater, end-of-game and two-for-one situations.

Kerr installed an offense based on ball movement, and from the first to the last day of training camp asked his players to make individual sacrifices for the good of the team. He ordered the removal of panels honoring players who had made the All-Star team that lined an entire wall of the practice facility and replaced them with more team-oriented images. Also taken down was signage celebrating Curry's NBA record-setting 272 3-pointers during the 2012-13 season.

In turn, Kerr, who has spoken of having nerves at the start of his coaching career, seeks input and weighs opinions before making decisions. Curry confirmed that Kerr was comfortable taking suggestions on strategy from players.

"Just knowing his operating modality, I think he may be the smartest guy in the room, but he never acts like the smartest guy in the room," said team president Rick Welts, who was in the same position in Phoenix for the three years when Kerr was general manager.

In the film room, Kerr routinely shows his sense of humor. After digital content assistant Michael Leslie humorously showed up to work on Halloween dressed in Kerr's Bulls jersey and shorts, the coach had his look-alike make a second surprise entrance at a film session and deliver a few lines of the presentation in front of the team.

Warriors coach Steve Kerr talks with Andre Iguodala during a team practice.

Warriors coach Steve Kerr talks with Andre Iguodala during a team practice. (Diamond Leung / Bay Area News Group)

Players said the sessions will sometimes include jokes at their expense — say, a lowlight on the tape interrupted by a "Saturday Night Live" cutaway gag — that leaves the team laughing.

The lightheartedness that accompanies the teaching breaks up the monotony to make serious work more enjoyable and serves another useful purpose.

"It gives you a little piece of him," said assistant coach of player development Bruce Fraser, a longtime friend who was Kerr's teammate at Arizona.

"He is who he is. He's not trying to be something he's not, and he's not going to fake that. He's authentic to his core, and when players realize that a guy's real, and he's in it for them and the whole, then that's a powerful thing."

Kerr said the piece of advice he received most was to simply be himself at a time when he was admittedly still finding his voice as a coach. He spoke with brash hall of fame NFL coach Bill Parcells about how to handle players before deciding to take the Warriors job. Kerr sometimes allows for upbeat music to be played during practice, taking a page from fun-loving Pete Carroll of the Seattle Seahawks after attending a training camp session led by the Super Bowl champion coach.

Seeking to stimulate his mind, Kerr has public relations staffers suggest non-basketball articles for his bedtime reading as his special assistant, Nick U'Ren, prints one and lays it his chair every morning for him to take home.

In a book about the late Arthur Ashe, Kerr read of "the fury of a patient man," a 17th century line of verse that the soft-spoken tennis champion said was one of his favorites. It ultimately became a popular saying in the Kerr family household and now rings true in his new workplace.

"He's let us have it a few times in practice as well when he senses we're not focused," Curry said.

"Hey, don't underestimate that pretty little boy face, OK?" said grinning associate head coach Gentry, who previously worked for Kerr as the head coach in Phoenix.

Fraser, who in college alongside Kerr spoke of one day coaching together, contends the Warriors have only seen glimpses.

"You don't play in the league for as long as he's played in the league with his athleticism and size unless you have something in you, and he has it in him," Fraser said. "He's actually a lot tougher than you would think. He's mild-mannered on the outside and has a fury inside.

"It's in him. It's in him."

For more on the Warriors, see the Inside the Warriors blog at ibabuzz.com/warriors. Follow Diamond Leung on Twitter at twitter.com/diamond83.


 

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