Steve Kerr almost got away with it. He almost got away being one of the best coaches ever despite doing actually nothing. Before you even THINK about trying to argue and call me stupid, let’s REALLY look at the facts here.
Warriors Before Steve Kerr
First of all, before we get into this season, let’s go back another year. Mark Jackson was the head coach. He was the Head Coach in Golden State for 3 years. In his first year, he went 23-43. He made a huge jump and coached the Warriors to a 47-35 record and lost in the conference semi-finals against my beloved Spurs. In his last year as head coach, the Warriors went 51-31 and lost to the Clippers in the first round. The greatness was already there, I mean Mark Jackson took them from 23 games to 47 in one season. Steph Curry, Klay Thompson, and Draymond Green all were about to enter their prime. Their success was inevitable. Mark Jackson never got the credit he deserved.
2014-2015 Warriors
As we know, this was the Warriors first championship of their dynasty. Steve Kerr literally piggybacked off Mark Jackson’s system and passed it as his own. Warrior players, hell even Steve Kerr himself, said that the Warriors were good defensively solely because of Mark Jackson. Not to mentioned they upgraded their roster that offseason. The Warriors went 67-15 and won the NBA championship. If I may be so bold, the Cavs didn’t have Kevin Love or Kyrie Irving due to injuries and therefore handled the Cavs easily seeding as that Lebron was by himself.
2015-2016 Warriors
73-9 don’t mean a thing without a ring. I have much respect for this roster, they made very little changes and improved over last year. Kerr didn’t have to do much coaching since it was the same guys and the same system, no wonder they had the best regular-season year ever. Plus it was only 6 more wins than last year. Although, they didn’t win a ring, despite being up 3-1 in the NBA Finals. To this day, as impressive as Lebron was, this is still a collapse of the Warriors and essentially Steve Kerr. I don’t care, if you’re up 3-1 in the finals, and you lose 3 games in a row, the coach has to share some if not most of the blame. The Cavs learned how to play the Warriors defensively and exploited them, and Steve Kerr had no adjustments or answer for it.
2016-2017 & 2017-2018 Warriors
I’m lumping these two years for the painfully obvious reason that they had KD. KD is still weak as hell for doing this, and practically ruined the NBA for 2 years, but since this is about Kerr, we’ll focus on him. If Steve Kerr didn’t have to coach much before this, he surely didn’t have to coach at all when this happened. Steve Kerr was literally a bench mob guy, he would cheer on his team and got oof for courtside tickets every night. How can a team go from 73-9 to 67-15 the next despite the upgrade in talent? Easy, Kerr didn’t coach, he didn’t have to. If the dip in wins wasn’t enough that year, the next year the Warriors had an even worse record going 58-24 despite upgrading their roster again! Why? Kerr didn’t give a flying fuck. He sat and just watched the team go by itself. He didn’t even need to show up to the games, but he supports his team so he went. No surprise, the Warriors won an NBA championship both these years, solely on talent, and nothing else.
2018-2019 Warriors
This season was more of the same for the Warriors and Steve Kerr, they went 57-25, went to the NBA finals for the 5th straight year. Although this time, Kevin Durant was injured for most of the series. He made an appearance in game 5 but he tore his Achilles after 12 minutes. It doesn’t matter though, they still had Steph Curry, Draymond Green, Andre Iguodala, Demarcus Cousins, Shaun Livingston, Kevon Looney, and Klay Thompson. Klay tore his ACL in game 6 of the Finals though. Their bench was good enough to still win…IF STEVE KERR COULD COACH.
Now Steve Kerr doesn’t have his bench, Klay Thompson or KD, and he’s actually having to coach now. I mean Kevon Looney is one of his most important players now. It’s been obvious he doesn’t know what he’s doing. I had the same complaint about Erik Spoelstra until Lebron left. When Lebron left, Spoelstra proved he was a good coach. Steve Kerr has yet to prove he can coach without overwhelming talent, and he may never will. Just know I’ve been saying this about Kerr since 2015, so you’ve heard it here first. Steve Kerr better hope the Warriors get Giannis Antetokounmpo in 2021, or he’s done for.
VIDEO: WILL THE WARRIORS MISS THE PLAYOFFS WITHOUT KLAY THOMPSON?
