The Warriors' rot starts at the top with Steve Kerr

[sonnyhill]

Finally, a local journalist, Alex Siquig, addresses the issue of coaching.

https://www.sfgate.com/warriors/article/warriors-collapse-steve-kerr-booed-18602920.php

The Warriors' rot starts at the top with Steve Kerr
SFGATE columnist Alex Siquig says the head coach's consistently baffling decisions have made this season a failure in progress
By Alex Siquig

A soft twofer to recalibrate Golden State’s spirit was on the menu this past weekend, but the Warriors refused to take advantage. They notched a shameful win Friday against Detroit, then, on Sunday, with their pride again on the line, they were dismantled and overwhelmed on their home floor by Toronto. The Raptors are, if not quite as miserable as the Pistons, hardly world-beaters. That they followed these sad performances by lying down Wednesday night and accepting an all-time thrashing by the New Orleans Pelicans — a formidable group, at least on paper — to the point that the Chase Center crowd booed their team shouldn’t obscure the new reality that even the dregs of the league are routinely having their way with the Warriors.

The Pistons, the Raptors, the Spurs, a banged-up Heat squad missing half their roster? A good team should have taken care of business against them all, especially in front of a home crowd desperate for some indication that the Titanic isn’t really sinking this time.

But the Warriors are not a good team, and perhaps more confounding, they’re not even a bad team. As many observers have remarked, more than anything they seem like a broken team. But there is still accountability to be had, there are results to answer for, patterns of behavior to shake free from. Steve Kerr, the thoughtful tenured professor who shepherded this franchise to previous unimaginable highs, is where the buck must, at some distant point, stop. Despite the warm feelings that winning generates, it would behoove us all to examine his recent record as a coach with a dispassionate, critical eye. That would reveal that Kerr has presided over exactly one season in the post-Kevin Durant years that exceeded expectations. Granted, it really exceeded expectations, but it was an inspiring exception, not the rule, and as the core shows their age, exceeding expectations like that feels like an increasingly flimsy proposition.

This year was supposed to be better than last year, with pesky youngbloods with a penchant for putting their face where a fist might be shipped unceremoniously off to our nation’s capital. But if anything, it’s been worse.

Over and over again, this team has proven its beatability, with stale — or worse, dumbfounding — rotations giving way to listlessness. On Nov. 28, the Warriors led by 16 against the Sacramento Kings with two minutes left in the third. Moses Moody, the third-year wing who appears and disappears from Kerr’s rotation for mysterious reasons, had the hot hand, hitting three 3s. He was then subbed out in favor of Andrew Wiggins, who was still slowly emerging from the worst season of his Warriors tenure. This felt like the wrong move, not just in hindsight, but in real-time. All that the “meritocratic” Warriors culture demands is that you stay ready and play hard when your number is called, and if you produce you will be rewarded with minutes. Moody came in, he produced, but because of his place in the pecking order, he was dismissed.

Kerr admitted after the loss that he had erred and should have left the scorching Moody in and instead subbed out Klay Thompson. But Thompson is one of his “guys,” and Kerr, to his credit and detriment, is loyal to his inner circle.

This is Kerr’s philosophy. Stick with the vets despite their play; reward or jettison the younger players on a whim in spite of their play. There are two sets of rules for one team, which is a problem larger than a single game, a single collapse. Ten days earlier, the Dubs had blown an 18-point lead to the Oklahoma City Thunder, a team full of talented young guns that Kerr may or may not trust in his own rotation.

Mere days after giving the game away to the Kings, on Dec. 2, Kerr found himself once again unable to find the right combination on his roster to hold on for a win after building a 22-point cushion against the Los Angeles Clippers. The size of the Clippers bothered the Warriors, and yet Trayce Jackson-Davis, the springy 6-foot-9-inch rookie whom Kerr had previously raved about, couldn’t make it onto the floor. Meanwhile, third-string point guard Cory Joseph played 16 minutes and finished with three assists, zero points, zero rebounds, zero steals and two fouls. Perhaps Kerr could have allocated some of those 16 minutes to Jackson-Davis?

There are many more case studies, perplexing substitutions and choices particularly late in games to parse, but in the interest of time, let’s look at the collapse that may have broken the camel’s back.

Golden State, playing inspired basketball to start the new year, was leading the reigning champion Denver Nuggets by 13 points in the fourth quarter in their Jan. 4 matchup. And then, yes, Nikola Jokić hit a ridiculous buzzer-beater. But before that gut punch, Jonathan Kuminga, the promising third-year athletic dynamo, was feeling it, scoring 16 points in 19 minutes, adding four rebounds and four assists. Most importantly, he was attacking the paint, getting to the line and imposing his will on the backpedaling champs.

And yet, he sat on the bench during the entire fourth quarter as the lead was whittled into nothing. The next day, the leaks began, with The Athletic reporting that Kuminga had “lost faith” in Kerr, citing anonymous sources, of course.

Kerr and Kuminga later cleared the air, and that’s good, because that’s what adults do, but how many more seemingly arbitrary decisions will it take for Kuminga to break rank again? Or Moody? How many first-round draft picks will be sacrificed for fidelity to a dead past while the present crumbles?

For those who still maintain that moving on from Kerr won’t fix Golden State’s problems, fine! Nobody is saying it will! But to assume that making any change at all would jeopardize what is already a failure-in-progress season, or argue that it’s futile to even entertain a coaching change? That’s weird, zero-sum thinking. When things aren’t working — and they’re clearly not — you have to start somewhere, with something, with someone. Yes, Kerr was the right man for the right moment, but that moment is slipping away. Even championships don’t erase fatal flaws, so much as mask them.

Not everyone can be a tactical genius like Erik Spoelstra or Julius Caesar, but there’s a bare minimum expected of a professional basketball coach: They must prepare their team to play, to win, to show the requisite amount of grit not just to make championship runs, but to outlast bottom-feeders in regular season games. Barely beating Detroit — Detroit! — on your home floor, in this respect, at this time, feels almost unforgivable.

In April of 2022, I wrote a column calling for a gradual, amicable divorce between the Warriors and Kerr. As you’d expect, I got much hate mail for this. Someone even compared me to Vichy France! The venerable Scott Ostler attempted to tear me apart in the pages of the Chronicle! In the short term, Kerr got the last laugh, as the Warriors flipped the proverbial switch, took care of business in the playoffs and valiantly secured their fourth title of the Curry/Kerr era. I was never more pleased to eat crow. But it’s amazing, despite the championship, how little my opinion has changed in the subsequent years. The familiar red flags are still there, and now the core is older. There’s less magic left to smooth over strategic miscalculations and tactical missteps.

Kerr has presided over an incredible, historic run. Four titles, the 73-win season, the blown 3-1 lead, the Durant Experiment, the improbable 2022 victory and now, the slow-motion free-fall. This is not a normal team, and watching them throughout the last decade has probably made us all a little crazy and scrambled our wires when it comes to expectations. Kerr is part of that, and perhaps the bar has been set so extraordinarily high that it’s impossible to blame anyone when they fail to clear it.

But these days, when Kerr, in a post-defeat haze, tells reporters, yet again, “We got outcoached,” it sounds less like a blunt moment of self-reflection, and more like he just doesn’t know what the hell else to say anymore. After Wednesday’s loss, he changed the script only slightly, saying his team is “fragile” right now and that he doesn’t “think that screaming and yelling at them is going to help.”

He continued, “I’m trying to encourage them. But at some point that may have to change.” It may — or maybe it’s Kerr who will change.

[Onus]

The longer this season plays out the more and more people will be piling on Kerr. Kerr has been absolutely pathetic as a "coach". Maybe he was the right coach for the dynasty, maybe. But he sure as hell isn't the right coach for this team or moving forward. This has to be his last year.

After getting humiliated and booed off the floor against Toronto the team looks even more lost after 2 days off against the pels. Then you play the same lineup that got blown out in the first half in the 2nd half and they get blown out again. Excuse me? Are you even watching the game?

[Chupchup]

The longer this season plays out the more and more people will be piling on Kerr. Kerr has been absolutely pathetic as a "coach". Maybe he was the right coach for the dynasty, maybe. But he sure as hell isn't the right coach for this team or moving forward. This has to be his last year.

After getting humiliated and booed off the floor against Toronto the team looks even more lost after 2 days off against the pels. Then you play the same lineup that got blown out in the first half in the 2nd half and they get blown out again. Excuse me? Are you even watching the game?

IMO Lacob is asking/forcing Kerr to play Kuminga with Wigs. Remember Lacob went to Kerr's post game press conference after the Nuggets game.

Kerr even said in later (Toronto?) press conference he is less inclined to have that line up again.. probably a poke a Lacob.

[Jester_]

Wow. Never thought I'd see the day.

[Onus]

The longer this season plays out the more and more people will be piling on Kerr. Kerr has been absolutely pathetic as a "coach". Maybe he was the right coach for the dynasty, maybe. But he sure as hell isn't the right coach for this team or moving forward. This has to be his last year.

After getting humiliated and booed off the floor against Toronto the team looks even more lost after 2 days off against the pels. Then you play the same lineup that got blown out in the first half in the 2nd half and they get blown out again. Excuse me? Are you even watching the game?

IMO Lacob is asking/forcing Kerr to play Kuminga with Wigs. Remember Lacob went to Kerr's post game press conference after the Nuggets game.

Kerr even said in later (Toronto?) press conference he is less inclined to have that line up again.. probably a poke a Lacob.

Kerr got bullied into this lineup by the press. It's not a good lineup because jk is not a good defender but the press thinks JK is a rising star.

[Chupchup]

We either switch the Core or switch the Coach. It doesn't make sense to do both. Alex Siquig by his own admission was calling for a change in 2022 and we went on to win it.

We've lost a ton of very very close to games this year. I still think we have a shot (slim but like 2022, we just have to thread that needle). If we can't get Siakam, let's go for Dejounte to be our 2022 Poole.

[Chupchup]

The longer this season plays out the more and more people will be piling on Kerr. Kerr has been absolutely pathetic as a "coach". Maybe he was the right coach for the dynasty, maybe. But he sure as hell isn't the right coach for this team or moving forward. This has to be his last year.

After getting humiliated and booed off the floor against Toronto the team looks even more lost after 2 days off against the pels. Then you play the same lineup that got blown out in the first half in the 2nd half and they get blown out again. Excuse me? Are you even watching the game?

IMO Lacob is asking/forcing Kerr to play Kuminga with Wigs. Remember Lacob went to Kerr's post game press conference after the Nuggets game.

Kerr even said in later (Toronto?) press conference he is less inclined to have that line up again.. probably a poke a Lacob.

Kerr got bullied into this lineup by the press. It's not a good lineup because jk is not a good defender but the press thinks JK is a rising star.

Probably indirectly the press forced Kerr. It's likely the press swayed Lacob who then forced Kerr.

[CDM_Stats]

We either switch the Core or switch the Coach. It doesn't make sense to do both. Alex Siquig by his own admission was calling for a change in 2022 and we went on to win it.

We've lost a ton of very very close to games this year. I still think we have a shot (slim but like 2022, we just have to thread that needle). If we can't get Siakam, let's go for Dejounte to be our 2022 Poole.

There's a lot of data that suggests that the team has a lot more winning potential than they are showing. But Kerr and whoever is asleep at the wheel for their analytics department seems to only be listening to half that message. They are listening to the part about how the team has a lot of winning potential.

They dont seem to be listening to the half that blames Kerr's reliance on Klay, Kerr's bizarre sub patterns, and Kerr's mangling of a once elite defense - again, to cater to Klay - are the reasons why its only winning potential and not winning actual

[Onus]

We either switch the Core or switch the Coach. It doesn't make sense to do both. Alex Siquig by his own admission was calling for a change in 2022 and we went on to win it.

We've lost a ton of very very close to games this year. I still think we have a shot (slim but like 2022, we just have to thread that needle). If we can't get Siakam, let's go for Dejounte to be our 2022 Poole.

There's a lot of data that suggests that the team has a lot more winning potential than they are showing. But Kerr and whoever is asleep at the wheel for their analytics department seems to only be listening to half that message. They are listening to the part about how the team has a lot of winning potential.

They dont seem to be listening to the half that blames Kerr's reliance on Klay, Kerr's bizarre sub patterns, and Kerr's mangling of a once elite defense - again, to cater to Klay - are the reasons why its only winning potential and not winning actual

At the beginning we were close. Losing close games down the stretch. Now everything is out of whack and people are lost.

[Chupchup]

We either switch the Core or switch the Coach. It doesn't make sense to do both. Alex Siquig by his own admission was calling for a change in 2022 and we went on to win it.

We've lost a ton of very very close to games this year. I still think we have a shot (slim but like 2022, we just have to thread that needle). If we can't get Siakam, let's go for Dejounte to be our 2022 Poole.

There's a lot of data that suggests that the team has a lot more winning potential than they are showing. But Kerr and whoever is asleep at the wheel for their analytics department seems to only be listening to half that message. They are listening to the part about how the team has a lot of winning potential.

They dont seem to be listening to the half that blames Kerr's reliance on Klay, Kerr's bizarre sub patterns, and Kerr's mangling of a once elite defense - again, to cater to Klay - are the reasons why its only winning potential and not winning actual

At the beginning we were close. Losing close games down the stretch. Now everything is out of whack and people are lost.

Well we did lose CP3 so not saying he would have won the game for us but he is a great floor general with high assist and low TO so he would have had a positive impact.

[Onus]

There's a lot of data that suggests that the team has a lot more winning potential than they are showing. But Kerr and whoever is asleep at the wheel for their analytics department seems to only be listening to half that message. They are listening to the part about how the team has a lot of winning potential.

They dont seem to be listening to the half that blames Kerr's reliance on Klay, Kerr's bizarre sub patterns, and Kerr's mangling of a once elite defense - again, to cater to Klay - are the reasons why its only winning potential and not winning actual

At the beginning we were close. Losing close games down the stretch. Now everything is out of whack and people are lost.

Well we did lose CP3 so not saying he would have won the game for us but he is a great floor general with high assist and low TO so he would have had a positive impact.

We’re down 2 of our top 3 players 3 of our top 8 really. And our coach has a Klay addiction.

[Chupchup]

At the beginning we were close. Losing close games down the stretch. Now everything is out of whack and people are lost.

Well we did lose CP3 so not saying he would have won the game for us but he is a great floor general with high assist and low TO so he would have had a positive impact.

We’re down 2 of our top 3 players 3 of our top 8 really. And our coach has a Klay addiction.

Well if anything Kerr is consistent on Klay

Anyway we both know Draymond, GP2 and CP3 would have played a lot of minutes if they are healthy. So that's why I still think we got hope.

[sonnyhill]

Well we did lose CP3 so not saying he would have won the game for us but he is a great floor general with high assist and low TO so he would have had a positive impact.

We’re down 2 of our top 3 players 3 of our top 8 really. And our coach has a Klay addiction.

Well if anything Kerr is consistent on Klay

Anyway we both know Draymond, GP2 and CP3 would have played a lot of minutes if they are healthy. So that's why I still think we got hope.

Hope is what many people yearn for on Sundays and is not a strategy for a NBA basketball team.

"Draymond, GP2 and CP3" are undersized, often-injured, and are not players whom a sane basketball organization would rely upon to pull a team out of the basement.

[Chupchup]

We’re down 2 of our top 3 players 3 of our top 8 really. And our coach has a Klay addiction.

Well if anything Kerr is consistent on Klay

Anyway we both know Draymond, GP2 and CP3 would have played a lot of minutes if they are healthy. So that's why I still think we got hope.

Hope is what many people yearn for on Sundays and is not a strategy for a NBA basketball team.

"Draymond, GP2 and CP3" are undersized, often-injured, and are not players whom a sane basketball organization would rely upon to pull a team out of the basement.

Well obviously that is your opinion LOL. 4 championships in 10 years. 2022 championship and we were very competitive earlier in the season (with Wiggs/Klay sucking too).

[marthafokker]

Well if anything Kerr is consistent on Klay

Anyway we both know Draymond, GP2 and CP3 would have played a lot of minutes if they are healthy. So that's why I still think we got hope.

Hope is what many people yearn for on Sundays and is not a strategy for a NBA basketball team.

"Draymond, GP2 and CP3" are undersized, often-injured, and are not players whom a sane basketball organization would rely upon to pull a team out of the basement.

Well obviously that is your opinion LOL. 4 championships in 10 years. 2022 championship and we were very competitive earlier in the season (with Wiggs/Klay sucking too).

Using that logic, Phil Jackson should still be coaching. Coaches don't change become dinosaurs.

[a8bil]

I'm not sure what everyone is expecting. Ws have money tied up in Dray, Wiggs, Klay, Steph and CP3. How many of those are playing? How many are playing well? The reality is the Ws are like a one star team right now. Some decent to good additional pieces, but still a one star team. It's record reflects that. Swapping or limiting Klay ain't going to change that.

[Chupchup]

Hope is what many people yearn for on Sundays and is not a strategy for a NBA basketball team.

"Draymond, GP2 and CP3" are undersized, often-injured, and are not players whom a sane basketball organization would rely upon to pull a team out of the basement.

Well obviously that is your opinion LOL. 4 championships in 10 years. 2022 championship and we were very competitive earlier in the season (with Wiggs/Klay sucking too).

Using that logic, Phil Jackson should still be coaching. Coaches don't change become dinosaurs.

I don't even know where you going with that comment. Anyway, we've been very competitive for most of the games this season. If healthy we still have a shot.

[Impuniti]

Well obviously that is your opinion LOL. 4 championships in 10 years. 2022 championship and we were very competitive earlier in the season (with Wiggs/Klay sucking too).

Using that logic, Phil Jackson should still be coaching. Coaches don't change become dinosaurs.

I don't even know where you going with that comment. Anyway, we've been very competitive for most of the games this season. If healthy we still have a shot.

He's saying you need to change to continue being competitive and can't rely on the same thing. Also 31 year old Klay and Dray is a huge difference from 33 year old Klay and Dray. Steph has had a massive dropoff this season as well, where before he was a top 2 player and this season he is top 10. Age is undefeated. One of Klay or Dray should have been replaced awhile ago.

[Chupchup]

Using that logic, Phil Jackson should still be coaching. Coaches don't change become dinosaurs.

I don't even know where you going with that comment. Anyway, we've been very competitive for most of the games this season. If healthy we still have a shot.

He's saying you need to change to continue being competitive and can't rely on the same thing. Also 31 year old Klay and Dray is a huge difference from 33 year old Klay and Dray. Steph has had a massive dropoff this season as well, where before he was a top 2 player and this season he is top 10. Age is undefeated. One of Klay or Dray should have been replaced awhile ago.

Where did I say don't trade anyone? So I didn't see where that applied to me. All I said was when healthy we'll be competitive (paraphrasing) so we'll still have a shot.

Also Steph and Klay are both stats wise playing the same as 21-22 season. Steph actually playing a little better. The big difference is we don't have Jordan Poole, Wiggins is playing like poop poop and Draymond has been suspended half the season. Draymond has actually been playing much better than 21-22 season. Dray is shooting like 42% from 3. Making FTs etc..

[SinceGatlingWasARookie]

Kerr is not the top.

Our team does not play as hard as the other teams, why?

Our team does not look happy and do not look like friends.

Draymond punching Poole did not do all of this.

If Kuminga could not deal with the fact that Lamb was outplaying him then get rid of Kuminga.

This problem is bigger than a couple guys but I don’t understand the problem.

Get Wiggins drunk and pay Wiggins good money to explain what is going on. Wiggins might be neutral and not part of any of the feuding factions in this team.

My got feeling says that the Warriors are feuding with each other and want to take their ball and go home.

Kerr is not the problem and we are not smarter than Kerr. Kerr is just our favorite scapegoat when we are not **** on Klay.

Kuminga and Moody might not be as good as people think they are.