When the Warriors lost their play-in game to the Suns 111-96 last season, the year ended at 37-45 and Steve Kerr walked into the postgame presser sounding like a man drafting his own farewell. “These jobs all have an expiration date,” he said; his contract had already hit one.
I’m gonna defer to the legendary Anthony Slater at ESPN who described how for the next three weeks Kerr sat with owner Joe Lacob and general manager Mike Dunleavy and talked about everything from how the team should play to who should be sitting next to him on the bench. Apparently the real sticking point was the roster as Jimmy Butler and Moses Moody were both rehabbing serious knee injuries that will keep them out into the new year, and the core was getting older by the month. There was belief that if management wanted to hit the eject button and rebuild, Kerr probably wasn’t the coach for that job.
Advertisement
Management didn’t hit the button though! On May 9 Kerr agreed to a two-year deal that keeps him the highest-paid coach in the league after he made $17.5 million the season before. Kerr brings stability, championship know-how, and the comforting voice that Stephen Curry and Draymond Green have been hearing for most of their careers.
The question from Dub Nation is whether Kerr can develop some young frontcourt talent while the Warriors are still trying to win. The narrative is that he has relied on squeezing all the juice he can out of trusty veterans while recent top lottery picks like James Wiseman and Jonathan Kuminga never realized their potential in Warriors’ uniforms.
That brings us to this past summer, when Golden State’s No. 11 pick was their most valuable chip, and for a while it looked like it might get packaged for a star.
Advertisement
Then Giannis went to Miami, and the Warriors kept the pick. A couple days before the draft, the front office asked Kerr what the roster needed most. Dunleavy told NBC Sports Bay Area that Kerr’s answer was, “There’s a huge gap in the middle of it with our forward position.” He wanted a connector, somebody who could fill that hole by sliding into the Steph and Draymond machine and keeping it…
Source link : https://sports.yahoo.com/articles/did-steve-kerr-finally-young-193829813.html
Author :
Publish date : 2026-09-29 19:38:00
Copyright for syndicated content belongs to the linked Source.
NBA News NBA News, Match Reports and Updates 
