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Steve Kerr spent five years coaching Andre Iguodala. He was prepared for a sixth. But Iguodala was an immediate casualty of the sign-and-trade deal which sent D’Angelo Russell to the Warriors (along with Treveon Graham and Shabazz Napier, who were quickly moved) in exchange for Kevin Durant and a future first-round pick. Iguodala was sent to the Memphis Grizzlies, along with a first-round pick to clear the necessary cap space to allow the Warriors, who were hard-capped by Russell’s acquisition, to complete the deal.
For Kerr, who spoke to NBC Sports Bay Area’s Monte Poole on The Warriors Insider Podcast on Tuesday, said the loss of Iguodala was the toughest in his entire coaching career.
“That was a complete gut punch,” Kerr said. “I’m not going to lie. That was probably the most… not even probably – that was the most painful loss, in terms of a personnel move, that I’ve felt as a coach in my five years.”
Iguodala was effectively like having a player-coach for the Warriors. His intelligence for the game was well-known, and few people likely appreciated that as much as Kerr.
“Guys in this profession come and go pretty quickly. It’s a very fluid business,” Kerr said. “But for what Andre has meant to not only our team but to me personally, as a coach, for accepting his role, for mentoring younger players, for monitoring the bench and keeping everything going – the respect that the stars had for him combined with his mentoring of the younger players – Andre was the unsung hero of all of this… For him to move on was just devastating for me.”
Kerr said he completely understands the move, which he believes is one that is beneficial in the long term. It didn’t, however, lessen the impact of it:
“This is why it’s not smart to be coach and GM at the same time. If you have both jobs, it’s been proven to be incredibly difficult. A coach looks at next year. A GM has to look at five years down the road.
I have the ultimate faith in Bob [Myers] and his staff. If you just look at it on paper, we went from a 35-year-old star player who’s got a year or two left to a 23-year-old talent who has a long career ahead of him. That makes perfect sense. I’m not ever going to argue with that. And I agree in the long term that it’s a good move.
But having said that, just on a personal level, that one will sting for a long time.”