u/BobRoss4Life — reddlx

Link to the article from Charles Bethea of the New Yorker

Great piece, well worth reading the full thing. Had a sit-down with Kerr shortly after Kerr's exit interview following that Suns loss. Went over much more than just the Warriors. His dream of making the NBA and how he thought it'd be via coaching, the loss of his father, the current state of both local and global politics and what he's passionate about politically, how the NBA can combat injuries and tanking, the Olympics, MJ and LeBron, Pop and Phil Jackson, etc.

Some snippets:

>Kerr’s success is as rare as his candor. “I’m the luckiest guy in the N.B.A.’s history,” he said last weekend, as his twelfth coaching season came to a close

>A small wooden placard on his desk read “WINNING IS GOOD”—a joking riff, he explained, on the line from “Animal House” that “knowledge is good.” The office’s whiteboard walls, frequently covered in a granddaughter’s doodling, noted Kerr’s “core values”: “COMPETITIVENESS, JOY, MINDFULNESS, COMPASSION.” There were also a few roller bags, about which Kerr—whose contract just expired, and whose future with the organization is an open question—only said, “It’s a long story.” Over the course of two hours, we discussed his hopes for next year, his complicated relationship with Draymond Green, the potential benefits of eliminating the three-point shot, and whether he might give politics a try.

growing up playing basketball abroad:

>I went to an American prep school called Cairo American College. I still have great friends from there. For ninth and tenth grades, I played on the school team. Every year we would fly to Greece, to Athens, to play in the tournament against other schools in the region. That was the highlight. This would have been, like, 1979, 1980. If there was a basketball gym in the entire country of Egypt, we never found it. So our games were played on dirt courts. Basketball was not really popular in Cairo, but these sporting clubs would field men’s teams and we usually were playing against players a lot older than us. And bigger. But we had the advantage because we all grew up playing basketball. The inverse was true in soccer. The American kids would take on the Egyptian kids at our school and we would just get absolutely destroyed

>...[I learned how to play with] The wind and the pebbles that were on the dirt courts. Later on, I had to deal with the gaps in the floor at the Boston Garden.

Draymond:

>He’s the best defensive player I’ve ever seen. And that’s saying a lot, given that I played with Scottie Pippen and Dennis Rodman. The modern game demands so much more than it did in the nineties... Draymond, he can guard any action, any position, any player. And he can also blow up the play behind the play if he’s not involved in the action because of his brain, his speed, his reach. I think he’s no more than six-five and a half—

>...Seven-one wingspan, incredible strength. He wins every jump ball because he’s quicker to anticipate what’s happening, which means he’s getting to the rotation faster. He’s seeing what’s happening faster. He’s just a step ahead of the other nine guys.

>...I don’t know that he’ll coach. He definitely has the brain for it. I don’t know if he has the patience. He’s an incredibly passionate, emotional guy, and that passion and energy has frequently gotten him in trouble. And I love him. I think he’s a really good-hearted person with an incredible brain, but if he wants to coach he’s going to have to learn how to control some of that emotion, that desire, and that fire that burns within him, and it’s not an easy thing to do.

>...Yeah. I mean, people pulling us apart. And in my first five years, we would get into three knockdown, dragouts a year. Part of it was, I just had to show the rest of the team that I’m in charge. You have to do things by a set of standards. It’s a community that you’re building, not just a team—a little society with values and standards and expectations. And then you’re a community that has to police itself. The coach has to demand certain behaviors, certain habits. So then for a long time we had a truce. I understood him so well. He understood me. But this year we had a major blowout in December. He’s such a unique person. There’s things he’s done that I can never forgive him for, and yet I will do anything for him.

Steph:

>He’s an incredible leader. Michael was an incredible leader himself, but it’s an entirely different approach. I mean, Steph’s compassion for his teammates, his joy in life, his joy for celebrating everybody else’s accomplishments is so powerful. But without Draymond’s competitive edge and fight, I don’t think we win all those championships. They were the perfect complement to each other. Then we had Andre Iguodala, Klay Thompson. When Kevin [Durant] got here, our talent level went to a different level—different planet, really. And I think that the team that won in ’17-18 was as good as or better than any team in the history of the game.

not commenting on the NBA's handling of Daaryl Morey for his comments on China and Hong Kong:

>I gave a really weak answer. I was trying to walk the line.

>...Yeah [I regret that]. I was wrong. We had a lot of players on our team that were doing business in China. A lot of our players would go there off-season. The N.B.A. had this huge relationship with China. But, of course, thousands of American companies had trade and relations with China. And so the N.B.A. just got caught up in all of this and I didn’t handle it well. I was trying to walk the company line and not make the N.B.A. mad.

whether he sees himself having a future in politics:

>I don’t have any desire to go into politics. I love basketball. This is my world. All of my friends and my people are in this world. And whether I keep coaching the Warriors or not, I imagine I’ll be involved in basketball.

how the NBA can combat all the injuries:

>I think we need to play fewer games. I don’t think that’s going to happen, because fewer games is less revenue and you’d have to have everybody agree... But I think we make a ton of money already, and I think we really need to be concerned about the product. We could shave some games off the schedule, which would allow for more rest, more practice.

>I’d say ten [fewer]. Talking with people who have really researched it, you can do ten, and what that would do for player health. ...We have the data now that shows the players are running faster and farther than ever before by dramatic margins because of the three-point shot, because teams crash the offensive glass now instead of just turning and running back. Because of the pace, because of analytics, we’ve learned that the quicker you can get a shot up, the more efficient your offense is. In the old days, they used to tell us the exact opposite. What we’ve learned is that the later you go, the worse your efficiency becomes. With all the athleticism, all the switching now, you just want to push the ball ahead before the defense can get set, too. But what that means is that we’re playing faster and the players are being pushed to further extremes. So you throw all this stuff into the hopper. Eighty-two games is too many—

the difficulty of drafting well:

>You can’t predict a guy’s personality. You can try. Our front office does these personality tests, we sit down and have lunch with them—but you don’t really know. You can’t. And you ask people, you ask their trainer, you ask their teammates, you do all kinds of background. But you always get to a point in the draft where you’re, like, “Should we take the safe guy who doesn’t have much of a ceiling or should we take this other guy despite the fact that he’s got some red flags?” Jerry West used to say, “If you’re right forty per cent of the time, you’re doing great.”

what drives him and his future as a head coach:

>I wake up excited to come to the gym and coach basketball and collaborate with the staff and see the players and try to help them achieve something. That’s an amazing life. ***And that’s all that really matters is: Do you enjoy what you do every day and are you fulfilled? I still am. Winning is obviously much more fun than losing, but losing is part of it.*** And this year was our worst season we’ve ever had. No, I take that back: the COVID year, we had the worst record in the league. We lost everybody to injury and that was a rough season, but I don’t look at it like I’m a failure now, or I was wildly successful then, even though that’s how everyone measures things. I’m well aware that, like Pop and Phil taught us, this is life. This is all part of your existence as a coach, as a human being, and you’re going to experience everything. And you want to help people have that perspective and really embrace the things that are going to be there for them every day, which is the joy that comes from competing and the camaraderie that comes from being part of a team. And that stuff occurs even on losing teams. And it’s especially important on losing teams to make sure those things are happening.

>...This is a really interesting situation, and I’m very respectful of the organization and their place in the universe right now. And I know how this stuff works. Most coaching runs just last a certain amount of time, and then it’s best for everybody to move forward. And what we have to figure out is whether now is that time, because what complicates it is we still have Steph and Draymond.

>...Another year each on their contracts. And I don’t want to abandon those guys. If Steph and Draymond were retiring this year, I think this would be an easy decision: we all go out together and the organization takes their new path. But it’s not that easy because I think Steph’s going to play another couple of years and I think we can still do some good things together. But these are all conversations that will happen in the next week or two and we’ll figure it out. And whatever happens, it’s going to end well. I know that, because it’s too important not to.

Again, much more in the the full article from Charles Bethea of The New Yorker