Eight years after being appointed as head coach, Steve Kerr has proven to be the right guyfor the Warriors‘ job. Since he took over, Golden State has made it to six NBA Finals and won four championships.
However, when the Dubs hired Kerr, only a few could have imagined they would do so well. Though he had a fantastic résumé from his playing career, in which he won five NBA rings in 15 seasons, Kerr had no experience whatsoever as head coach.
It didn’t take long for him to prove the front office right, leading the Warriors to a then franchise record 67 wins in his first season. ButDraymond Greenrecently admitted that even the players had doubts aboutKerr’soffensive-minded basketball at the beginning.
Draymond Green says Warriors thought Steve Kerr was ‘out of his mind’ at first
“When Steve Kerr took over the job, I remember the first training camp, he’s like, ‘ball movement, cut, stop standing and waiting for the ball,'” Green said in a recent episode of the “Checc-N-In” podcast, via Fadeaway World.”I’ll catch the ball at the top of the key, Steph on the wing, and he’s like, ‘Steph, cut’ and it’s like, ‘No, dude, I’m supposed to pass the ball to Steph right here.’ And he said, ‘Pass the ball and move without the ball, the ball will find the hands of the people that are supposed to get the shots.’
“We all thought he was out of his mind. And then as we started to do it, then you figure it out and you like, ‘Yo, this is actually pretty incredible.’ Like, it’s ball moving, ball moving. Ball moving. Screen roll, it’s ball moving, ball moving. ball moving. There goes the mismatch, but nobody’s really standing. And that’s kind of where all this flow offense and all this stuff came.”
Kerr came with completely different ideas to those that the Warriors wereused to, so it sounds normal that the team doubted it could work. But soon they realized they were capable of pullingit off, and the rest is history.