No dynasty lasts forever, but if there was one that sports fans thought had a chance to go the distance, it was the New England Patriots.
Led by two of the greatest football minds in the game’s history, Bill Belichick and Tom Brady, the Patriots have dominated their discipline for nearly two decades and are once again a leading threat to win the Super Bowl. On Friday, though, ESPN’s Seth Wickersham published an article detailing the division that exists within the Patriots’ headquarters as egos threaten to bring down the franchise.
The strife among key Patriots’ figures can happen to any sports team, and the fact it has taken this long to rock New England is a sign of the incredible stability Belichick and Brady have enjoyed at the top. On Friday afternoon, Warriors’ head coach Steve Kerr joined Kevin Frandsen & John Lund on KNBR to discuss how he manages egos within Golden State’s budding dynasty, and detail what’s working for the franchise at this point in time.
“You do your best, but there’s always going to be some cracks just because it’s the nature of mankind,” Kerr said. “Working together and there’s a lot of different egos and personalities and sports is all about trying to blend all of that stuff together and the great thing with our organization is we’ve got the ownership and the management and the coaching staff all on the same page and we’ve got our leaders, our best players are all our hardest workers and our most competitive people.”
Golden State not only survived a 73-win season that resulted in a devastating NBA Finals loss, it bounced back and won a title the following season. The Warriors did so after adding former MVP Kevin Durant to an already large contingent of stars, as the team showed it was unafraid to blend big personalities together under Kerr.
“I think the reason we’ve had this success over the last few years is the pieces all fit,” Kerr said. “You try to ride it as long as you can and stick to your principles and treat everybody with respect and then inevitably, there’s going to be stuff that comes up. Even the very best organization in sports, the Patriots and the Spurs, those are the two that jump out and even they’re dealing with stuff. It’s inevitable you’re going to have some adversity and internal stuff that happens and you’ve just got to deal with it the best you can.”
Kerr might be the perfect coach to lead the Warriors through this period in time, as he spent significant portions of his career playing under Phil Jackson and Gregg Popovich, two NBA coaches who proved they could manage egos better than almost anyone. Both coaches established cultures of winning, even though Kerr said Jackson and Popovich navigated very different situations.
“The Spurs are the better example, the Bulls were kind of disfunctional to be honest,” Kerr said. “We had a clear division between management and the coaches and there was a lot of weird stuff that happened there but Jordan was so dominant and Phil kept such a steady hand on the group that we were able to deal with everything and deal with all of that stuff. The Spurs to me were really the gold standard of organizational stability and I think we have something pretty similar to that and it really stems from Joe and Peter buying the team seven years ago and making the commitment to winning.”
To listen to Frandsen & Lund’s full interview with Kerr, click the podcast link below. To hear Kerr discuss how he manages egos, skip ahead to the 11:32 mark.