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The Warriors are fun again, and Steve Kerr is to thank

By

Jacob Hutchinson

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© Joe Nicholson-USA TODAY Sports

It sounds simple. Almost stupid, even, at face value. Of course the best team in basketball is fun. They have Stephen Curry, Kevin Durant and Klay Thompson (see, Monday night) scoring the ball like the career mode player you create in NBA2K with a 99-rating from three. That team is always going to be fun, right?

Right?

No. I guess this has more to do with the Warriors’ almost incomprehensible level of success over the last four years, but last year was boring. This isn’t just coming from me. See examples one, two, and three.

The Warriors were so good and have been good for so long that it just seemed like a foregone conclusion that they’d win the title again. They dealt with injuries, so all of their must-watch players, especially Curry, missed decent chunks of time, and they checked out of some games, knowing they didn’t need the No. 1 seed to make it to the Finals again.

The highlight was probably the night the whole team went to Curry’s 30th birthday party. They were so un-worried about taking the No. 1 seed that they cancelled practice the next day.

Still, that foregone conclusion of another championship was right. They were tested by the Houston Rockets, but the Warriors came through it for their third title in four years. Of course, the team with Curry, Durant, Thompson, and Draymond Green won the title. Again.

That’s not to say it wasn’t entertaining at times. It was better than watching most of the games between teams in the East, although that’s a pretty low bar to exceed.

It was a season that was defined by the slow grind. Injuries and the crosshairs on the Warriors’ back gave the season a theme of the tough attempt to repeat. It was constantly echoed last year how much the team had to get through to get back to the Finals and win. And it was true more so than maybe any other year they won a title in the past four seasons.

But it wasn’t fun. It missed that feeling of the first championship with the newness of Curry’s out-of-area-code shot making, or even the first one with Durant.

Steve Kerr said it himself this preseason. He told his team they needed to change their approach. The “it’s-so-tough,” always-climbing-uphill, “we’re-a-target-for-everyone” mentality wasn’t going to work.

“We sort of addressed it the night before camp,” Kerr said. “Last year, I took the approach of we’re going to stare right in the eyes of the beast. I kind of shared my experience as a player as, ‘Hey, I know this is going to be hard; we all know this is going to be hard.’ But I don’t want that to be our theme this year. You can only go with that for so long before it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.”

In year five of a dynastic run, Kerr, a disciple of the zen master Phil Jackson, has set the focus on enjoying it; savoring those Curry shimmies, the Klay shooting explosions, Durant crossovers, and the Damian Jones monster dunks.

“This is not about fatigue and trying to get to the Finals five years in a row,” Kerr said. “People are going to be mentioning all that stuff, who the last team was to do it and who has won four out of five and history and how are we going to summon the energy for it. We’re not talking about that at all. What we’re trying to do is embrace who we are in this moment in time. Time and space where, man, we’ve got a pretty good thing going. Let’s enjoy every day, let’s enjoy the process. You never know how long anything’s going to last.”

And there’s been plenty to enjoy so far.

On Monday night, the slumping Thompson (he was 5-of-36 from three prior to yesterday) broke Curry’s record for three-pointers made in a game with 14. He even hit the last one looking like Jackie Moon with a headband on (to cover a cut on his forehead) that looked ridiculous. He scored 52 points and set that record without playing any of the fourth quarter and about half of the third quarter. Of course, the Moon comparison comes from Klay himself:

That came after Curry scored 51 points in Oracle Arena last week. He shot a few threes from nearly half court and missed them, but even Kerr said after the game that he was nodding his head thinking, “Yeah, that’s a good shot.” He also made a circus layup that didn’t count on the scoreboard, but did in our hearts.

Durant, amidst speculation that he might head to the New York Knicks this offseason, dropped 41 points and 25 in the fourth quarter, in Madison Square Garden last Friday night.

After that, the Warriors torched Josh Duhamel in the most one-sided Twitter battle ever seen. If that sentence doesn’t make any sense to you, here’s a recap: at the All-Star Game last year, Fergie sang the national anthem in a drawn-out, talk-sing-yelling style, that, if nothing else, was unique and hilarious. Draymond Green started to crack on camera before Curry and other All-Stars began to lose it.

Duhamel, Fergie’s ex-husband, responded in a recent interview by calling Green a “prick” and saying “if he was a real man” he would’ve apologized to Fergie. Of course, Duhamel then said “of course not” when asked if he ever reached out to Green for comment.

The Warriors’ response? The spark to the #fergieremixchallenge, which took a remixed beat from beat maker @remixgodsuede and featured one of the most iconic videos in NBA Twitter history. After this, Duhamel accepted the L with honor, crediting the Warriors’ retort.

That series of events, which is something that sounds like part of a fever dream – “Remember when the Warriors roasted Josh Duhamel on Twitter by starting a dance challenge to a remix of Fergie’s national anthem?” – is just one of the many highlights in the early season. It comes without mentioning what happens in practices and pregame warmups, where Curry does things like this:

And this:

And Klay goes at Damian Jones hilariously in one-on-one:

This all started while Thompson has been in a funk. This first version of this column, written before Monday night, read:

“He’s due for one of his breakout shooting nights, and once he does, the old Klay, who will hit every shot in a quarter while often looking like he’s thinking about what’s for dinner, will be back. That hilarious, laid-back Klay has yet to arrive, and still, the Warriors have been fun.”

That Klay arrived Monday night, and it came with the trademark hilarity of Warriors players forcing each other to take shots. Curry made sure Thompson got the ball three-straight possessions last night to beat Curry’s single-game three-point record. That’s how much this team is enjoying basketball.

All of this – the relaxedness, infectious laughing, dancing, and palpable enjoyment for the game – all stems from Kerr.

The reason Curry, Durant and Thompson can all go off for 50 points every night this year is because Kerr has them playing for enjoyment. He said his given all three a “neon green light” to shoot the ball whenever and wherever. You think the Warriors would have ever reached this point with the holy oil-healing, stripper-soliciting Mark Jackson, who “couldn’t get along with anybody else in the organization,” at the helm? It only happens with Kerr.

Even a good coach who trusts his players and gets along with people in the organization wouldn’t have the same success Kerr has had. He has a level of self-awareness and credibility that only comes as being a former player, student of great basketball and innate intelligence and awareness for how to treat other people.

Kerr has that combination in rare form, and while you can say that the Warriors would still be fun without him, there’s no way the Warriors would be playing this unrivaled brand of life-loving basketball without the cerebral, genuine Kerr at the helm.

Now, this is not to say the way the Warriors are enjoying themselves is solely due to Kerr: DeMarcus Cousins has added a hilarious, enigmatic presence – and got ejected from a game on the bench, then nobly apologized to the team. Curry is maybe the most life-loving man in America, Durant seems more relaxed than ever, Thompson’s only level is chill, and the team is a lot younger than it has been in recent years. But all of that working fluidly comes back to Kerr and how he started training camp.

He reframed the conversation.

In the final year that Oracle Arena will host the Warriors, a different feel has taken hold. There is no longer the mentality of, “Wow, it’s going to be tough for the Warriors to win another championship.”

It’s about enjoying what’s here right now.

The players feel it. The coaches feel it. And the fans definitely feel it. Maybe this all changes down the stretch if the Warriors run into injury trouble or one of their studs hits a slump. But let’s not even go there. That’s not what this season is about.

It’s about watching Curry hit 35-foot three pointers in traffic and score finger roll layups that he sends 12 feet in the air. It’s about watching Thompson break Curry’s three-point record with a ridiculous headband that he, and everyone else, were aware looked absurd. It’s about watching Durant get into the face of a referee, pick up a technical, and then go off for another 20 points.

It’s about Kerr inevitably smashing a clipboard and throwing his hands up in awe at one of Curry’s moonshots. It’s about Green doing all the work that he doesn’t get enough credit for and then getting clowned for his high school cornrows. It’s about Jones trying to dunk through an unbreakable rim and Alfonzo McKinnie going after offensive rebounds like his life depends on it.

Enjoy what you’re seeing game-in and game-out and don’t worry about whether the Warriors will win another title this year or stress about what happens in the offseason. We’ll get there when we get there.

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