Head coach Steve Kerr and the Warriors made waves Monday night when Kerr made the decision to let his players coach themselves against the Suns.
Kerr was adamant that he, his team, and his staff meant no disrespect towards the Suns; rather, he was simply trying to mix things up and increase the Warriors’ levels of engagement and focus, which have been lacking in recent weeks.
He reiterated this sentiment Tuesday when he joined Tolbert & Lund.
“I guess you could sort of make the assumption that what we’re trying to do is say, ‘We can beat you without a coach,’” Kerr said. “And maybe that’s the assumption, and that’s what people are saying in terms of disrespect. That misses the point entirely, you know, of the whole thing. This is our team, and this is our season. Every team has their own set of circumstances, and we’ve been doing this for a few years, and our guys are where they are, and this last month has been rough, and this is just a, you know, outside-the-box tactic, make the players take ownership and allow them a different voice, and they ran with it. They were great last night. I mean, they drew up good plays out of the huddle, they were engaged, they were getting on each other when they weren’t boxing out. I’m like, ‘Yeah, now you know how I feel, alright?’ It’s just better coming from them than from me night after night. So that’s all it was. It had nothing to do with trying to show anybody up or anything like that.”
Kerr further detailed how the players took control of Monday’s proceedings, noting that they also ran the shootaround Monday morning. Center JaVale McGee even controlled the computer during the team’s video session.
“They were very serious, and they were really good at it,” Kerr said. “And, you know, I didn’t even assign anybody any job at all. I just told them a couple days before, I said, ‘This is going to be your game. I’m not going to say anything, the coaches aren’t going to say anything.’ So we show up for shootaround yesterday, and Andre basically announces, ‘I got the scout.’ And JaVale goes and runs the computer. You know, we normally have a video guy who runs the computer, and they said, ‘We got this.’ And we just sat packing. They had the whole thing going. And during every timeout, you know, one of them would grab the clipboard from me. I didn’t ask anybody to do it. There was no requirement, no assignment, it just happened organically. So it’s really cool. It’s a really, kind of, neat experiment and exercise where you sort of empower guys and they take on a leadership role, and communication improves and increases, and all in all, like I said, the results were great in terms of just the focus, and I was really pleased at just how locked in they all were.”
Listen to the interview below. For Kerr on the Warriors coaching themselves, skip to the 2:45 mark.