Nobody on the Warriors is looking forward to the All-Star break more than Steve Kerr — and we know this mainly because he started talking about it a few weeks ago, with seven or eight games left before the week off, which starts after Wednesday’s game in Portland.
That’s almost 1/10th of the regular season, chalked up as part of the pre-break blues, and Kerr and his players probably started daydreaming about the beaches and the long break at lot longer ago than that.
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It makes sense, even with Stephen Curry, Kevin Durant, Draymond Green and Klay Thompson headed to Los Angeles on Friday for the All-Star festivities:
The Warriors have played 365 games, counting the postseason, in the last three-plus years, and Kerr is tired, his players are tired, they’re a bit tired of each other, the players are tired of Kerr and his staff barking at them for the same old errors and Kerr and his staff are tired of doing the barking and also they’re tired of watching it over and over.
This is not unusual for a team that has been together this long, won this much, been under the spotlight this intensely, and is this much more talented than 90 percent of the teams they play.
The Warriors could probably win another title this season while on auto-pilot and there’s a chance that they will back themselves into exactly this kind of semi-effort. But it’s not exactly the ideal way to head into March, April and May … and these are the kinds of first-world strains that prevented, say, the Bulls from winning more than three titles in a row (twice) and have worn down more than a few dynastic teams.
So, while I was surprised when Kerr turned over most of the in-game coaching duties to Andre Iguodala, Draymond Green and other veterans in Monday’s victory over the lowly Suns, I was not at all stunned that the Warriors seemed to be instantly engaged by the one-game changeup.
It was more than clear from the first moments of the first timeout: With Kerr dawdling 20 feet away, the players were animated, paying close attention to everything Iguodala said and drew up, adding other thoughts, and they snapped out of the break with the kind of bounce and energy that has been lacking for weeks.
Then they repeated it for all the other timeouts, and went on to beat Phoenix by 46 points.
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I’m not saying this was the moment that turned around their season, and Kerr wasn’t saying that, either, because it’s not like the Warriors were in deep and desperate trouble otherwise. This was one game, in the doldrums, against a team that was set up to lose this game by a lot and ended up losing it by a lot.
But it’s no secret that Kerr and others in the Warriors hierarchy have been getting a little concerned about the recent energy level and focus. The one thing in past seasons you could always count on with this team, even through some shaky patches, is that the Warriors would be ready and eager for the big games.
And that didn’t happen when they got smacked by the Thunder at Oracle Arena last week and it didn’t happen in their two losses to Houston this season.
During the blah period, key guys forgot the plays in the middle of action more than a few times. Box-outs were ignored, the top guys tried to make up for it with impossible passes that were easily picked off, and the defensive rotations just kind of disappeared occasionally.
Again, none of this was or is crisis-level stuff — this happens to teams in the NBA dog days all of the time, and it has happened to the Warriors in previous seasons, too.
But Kerr and his staff must’ve felt that this one was different because he said so. And then he let the players coach the game Monday, which he has never done before, of course.
This is different. Kerr and the Warriors brass knew this season would be tough — after three straight trips to the Finals, without the novelty of last season’s Kevin Durant arrival, with some compounding age on their key bench veterans, with a bunch of their top competitors loading up specifically to counter the way the Warriors play, and with all the social media and branding responsibilities that are part of being a Warrior these days.
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So why not let Iguodala, Draymond, David West and Curry take control of the huddles for a game? Why not, as Kerr mentioned after the game, remind them that this isn’t his team or Bob Myers’ team or Joe Lacob’s team, it’s their team — which is a subtle reminder that he can’t push them to do anything that they don’t really want to do themselves.
Obviously, this move has stirred up the NBA multitudes, shouting that Kerr was showing disrespect to the Suns and to the game of basketball by literally walking away from the huddles and the greaseboard for a game.
And I wholly understand that some Suns players were not exactly thrilled that he chose this game to do this. They played in the game. They have the right to react however they react.
But that’s another part of Kerr’s psychology with the Warriors: He doesn’t insult their intelligence by pretending that games against lesser foes are life-or-death moments; he didn’t tell them that the Suns were a legitimate threat and he sure went out of his way to indicate this conclusion by leaving the huddles.
This offends some parts of the NBA cognoscenti, but that’s one thing that has never really worried the Warriors, and Kerr especially. It’s silly to try to cast this in any other way except that the Warriors are more talented than everybody else and vastly more talented than teams like the Suns, and Kerr does not drive himself into a fake frenzy trying to tell his players — and show to the public — that 100 percent of these games are vital and urgent moments.
Why waste the energy when you know you’ll need most of it in May and June?
So, sometimes the Warriors are visibly bored. We’ve seen much more of that this season than in past seasons, and the record shows it. Right now, they’re on pace to win 63 games, which is obviously a large amount, but Kerr’s Warriors teams have never won fewer than 67.
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That’s different, too.
The entire working thesis of this season, though, has been to regulate the pace, to make sure their most important players don’t peak too soon (which Kerr mentioned again Monday night), and try to guide the team to a physical and emotional high point in May and June.
Kerr, who obviously has battled his own health issues for a while now, might also be regulating his own energy expenditures, too. I sure hope he is. His whole staff has been through the marathon, right alongside him, and it isn’t easy on anybody.
But if you plot it out like that, the coach has to do something to make sure everybody wakes up in time. And Kerr figured it would be Monday night, at least as a way to go into the break.
Kerr knows what’s right for this team, a staffer told me Monday night after the game, and Kerr knows it might not be right for other teams; but the Warriors are not other teams.
Also: Kerr isn’t just another coach.
They’re a very special, once-in-a-generation collection — head-strong, proud, smart, supremely talented and a little tired right now, but they looked pretty peppy and refreshed on Monday, and if this continues to Wednesday and then they gun the engines to full power after they reassemble after the break, then I’ll give Kerr another “A” in Warriors Psychology.
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Kerr and the Warriors have been and will get criticized for this, but this is all part of their place in the NBA universe. When you’re as big as they are or LeBron James is, you are a daily topic-target for the talk shows, blogs and every other assorted piece of the media pie, including this very item.
And this is also part of what can tire out a much-discussed team. An NBA executive told me Tuesday that he wonders if the social-media barrage is taking a toll on some of the Warriors players, not because they’re doing anything wrong but because they’re immersed in it, react to some of it, and maybe overthink some things.
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But they went through all of this and even more in Durant’s first season here, and went 67-15 and then 16-1 in the playoffs.
So … it’s obviously all survivable. It’s just something to discuss. Something for Kerr to flick out there, another card for him to play, as he described it, and he did it in a very theatrical way. Some coaches have done this without standing outside the huddle each timeout — they just ask a player for his opinion and then draw it up for everybody.
But Kerr wanted his players to know he wasn’t even going to check in on them. He wanted the TV cameras to see it, too. The players loved it. And all of this turned a boring game into something that seemed to shed new light on a team that is already the most-examined team on earth.
It’s February, and we have new things to discuss about the Warriors. I think we all appreciate that, even Kerr, though he might not think about it too much while he’s on that beach in Hawaii for the next week or so.
(Top photo: Kelley L Cox/USA TODAY )
