Steve Kerr Gets An Assist From His Coaches

During his job interview with the Golden State Warriors at an airport-hotel conference room in Oklahoma City one year ago, in which he delivered a 16-page PowerPoint presentation and detailed breakdown of every player on the roster, Steve Kerr demonstrated that he had a clear concept of what it would take to coach in the NBA.

But Kerr's forward-facing vision alone doesn't necessarily explain his historically successful rookie season as a coach. It's his lateral vision. To his left on the Warriors bench is Alvin Gentry, who has been a head coach for all or parts of 12 seasons with four NBA teams, and will get a fifth crack with New Orleans next season. To his right (usually; sometimes the positions are reversed) is Ron Adams, who has spent 20 years as an NBA assistant and is regarded as one of the finest technicians in the game.

"I've said this for many years, that you're a good assistant because you have a good head coach, and you have a good team," Adams told me Monday.

But the inverse is equally true: A good head coach is largely a product of capable assistants and talented players. Kerr is not only willing to acknowledge that—frequently and publicly—but to assign important responsibilities to all of them.

Indeed, it isn't even crazy to cite the Warriors' coaching staff as the secret behind their league-best 67-15 regular-season record, and the reason they are expected to take down the Cleveland Cavaliers in the NBA Finals and win their first championship since the days of Rick Barry and Clifford Ray.

Kerr's assistants are also what separates him most distinctly from his predecessor in Oakland, Mark Jackson.

Firing Jackson after consecutive playoff runs was not an easy or popular choice. Notably, it did not sit well with star point guard Stephen Curry, who had blossomed into stardom under Jackson.

But team CEO Joe Lacob had several problems with the former coach, and foremost among them was Jackson's choice, and treatment, of assistants. The original cast Jackson assembled was underwhelming, to say the least. He didn't allow them to speak to the press, and rarely praised them.

After Jackson reassigned the popular Brian Scalabrine to the Warriors' D-League affiliate in Santa Cruz, and after Darren Erman was fired for secretly recording team meetings, the team entered the 2014 playoffs with a bizarre and ragtag group of coaches.

From the start, Kerr's attitude was different. Gentry and Adams, both of them on the highest rung of NBA assistant coaches, were two of the first three people on his wish list. The other was David Blatt, who got the Cleveland head coaching job instead and will now attempt to poke holes in this story of Warriors luster.

At the time, Gentry was Doc Rivers' top assistant with the Clippers, while Adams had a similar position with the Boston Celtics. Gentry accepted a lateral move, and Adams took a demotion to join Kerr in California – lured in part by Lacob and co-owner Peter Guber's wallets. Gentry and Adams are among the highest-paid assistants in the league.

Considering the Warriors' trajectory, they seem well worth the largesse.

The roles on this staff are clear cut: Gentry designs the offense, Adams draws up the defense. The Warriors are not the first NBA team to mimic the NFL system. Phil Jackson famously employed Tex Winter as his Chicago Bulls offensive coordinator, and John Bach, then Frank Hamblen, as defensive coordinator. Larry Bird did the same thing in Indiana with Rick Carlisle and Dick Harter. But it is far from the norm, and it has worked brilliantly for the Warriors.

For Kerr, Gentry has been part strategist, part kindly uncle.

"He's been huge for me, given that this is my first year," Kerr said. "I had to feel the game, I had to feel the rhythm. And to have him next to me each game, before and after extra practice, to offer advice, to offer words of wisdom, … it's great, just having that sounding board."

During games, Kerr constantly consults with Gentry on things like substitution patterns, timeouts and inbound plays, and Gentry is by his side when Kerr addresses the team during timeouts.

More tangibly, Golden State has developed a vibrant scoring attack this season. Jackson turned the Warriors into what they have rarely been in their history—a fierce defensive team. But his isolation-heavy offense was stagnant. It was also repugnant to Kerr and Gentry, who are philosophically wed to what Kerr refers to as "ball movement and spacing and pace."

"I think every player is more suited to play with movement than isolation," Kerr said. "I think it's just easier to get a shot when the ball is moving and people are moving, so the defense can't set up."

Virtually everyone on the team has benefited from Gentry's up-tempo system, which he calls a "melting pot" of drag screens, dribble handoffs, some post action and constant passing. Small forward Harrison Barnes is the best example. Barnes looked utterly lost under Jackson in 2013-14, but has been invigorated under Kerr. His field-goal percentage improved from 39.9 to 48.2 this season.

Adams had more to work with, but is equally regarded in the building for his "shell" protection scheme, which relies on versatile defenders who can switch off on screens and not get exposed by bigger or smaller opponents. Under Adams, power forward Draymond Green grew into a Defensive Player of the Year candidate, Curry rose to the challenge of regularly guarding the other team's point guard and even backup forward/center Marreese Speights, a fine shooter who had generally embraced defense the way most of us treat nit removal, became a serviceable defender.

Adams is an unapologetic wonk. After Monday's practice in downtown Oakland, as Kerr addressed the media and the other assistants relaxed into informal shootaround sessions with various players, Adams was hard at work with James Michael McAdoo, the Warriors' undrafted rookie forward.

"He really makes you lock in on the fundamentals of defense, focusing on technique maybe the way you would focus on your shot," Green said. "If you go 10 days without shooting a basketball, how would you shoot? So he'll say if you go 10 days without working on some defensive technique stuff, probably be the same way."

Meanwhile, the youngest members of the Golden State coaching staff show tremendous promise, a tribute to Kerr's eye for leadership. Jarron Collins is 36 years old and four seasons removed from his career as an NBA center. Luke Walton, 35, played for the Cavaliers two years ago.

Walton tends to focus more on offense here, while Collins skews to the defensive side and works with the Warriors' bigs a lot. Neither is hesitant to jump into drills and mix it up with the players, a big reason Kerr wanted them.

Both of the young assistants have their admirers. Many already see Walton as a future head coach, and perhaps a candidate to move up the ladder when Gentry leaves after this series. It's notable that during Warriors timeouts, Walton stands alongside Kerr and Gentry.

Collins, too, has impressed the players.

"JC, he's sharp, man," Barnes said. "I remember the very first time he did scout, I was like, 'This guy's gonna be a head coach someday.' He has it. … I think he's really good at articulating, like from a player's side, how he wants us to play, things he would want to do and implement. That's what separates good coaches from great coaches."

"Scout" goes like this. One of the coaches is assigned an opponent, and is responsible for working with the Warriors' advance scouts and video coordinators to compile each of that team's game tapes, and to present its personnel groupings, tendencies and play sets to the rest of the Golden State coaches and players, then to lead walk-throughs in preparation. In this postseason, Collins scouted the Pelicans and Rockets, Walton the Grizzlies and Cavaliers.

On many teams, this information would be filtered through senior coaches. Not here.

"As a player, I've been on different organizations where not every coach had a voice or even spoke a lot," Collins said. "I think that we do a really good job of making sure that everybody from coaches to advance scouts to our video guys, everybody has a voice."

The other key member of the Golden State coaching staff is Bruce Fraser, who played with Kerr at the University of Arizona in the mid-1980s and has been a close friend ever since. Fraser is largely assigned to Curry and Klay Thompson. And if you've seen Curry shoot, you can imagine how many perimeter passes that might entail on a given day. Fraser's secondary role is to be a smartass and keep the mood light in Oakland.

He is not alone in that. Kerr and his assistants seem to genuinely enjoy one another, which was almost certainly not true of the Jackson regime. When they put together scouting tapes, they splice in self-deprecating footage like Walton's appearance on "The Young and the Restless," and Kerr's turn in a Straight-Outta-Tucson-style rap video while in college. Collins said that if you're looking for Kerr, you are as likely to find him in Gentry's office, or Adams', as in his own.

"It's like a running joke, but we call them pickup meetings," Collins said. "We don't have, like, designated meeting times. It's like pickup basketball."

And while the Xs and Os might originate with Gentry and Adams, the structure comes from Kerr. He's the one clutching the whiteboard when there are eight seconds on the clock and it's time to draw up a final play (spoiler alert: the ball's going to Curry), but his willingness to delegate, and the confidence he has showed in both choosing his helpers and honoring their input, has made the Warriors great.

Center Andrew Bogut, who has traded barbs with Jackson since the ex-coach's return to the broadcast booth, might have said it most pointedly last Friday: "Whenever you get a head coach that's not full of himself, it makes a huge difference."

Bogut's thinly veiled shot at Jackson may be debatable. 79 wins—and counting—into the season, his complimentary assessment of Kerr is not.