First as a player, now as a coach Steve Kerr coming up clutch in playoffs
OAKLAND – The NBA playoffs have a way of making even the most qualified of professional coaches look like amateurs.
The pressure is ratcheted up, as is the scrutiny, with armchair point guards ready to criticize every move that backfires or strategy that falls flat. Just ask the Cleveland Cavaliers' David Blatt, the decorated European coach in his first NBA season who came under so much fire after his near-disaster of a finish in Game 4 against the Chicago Bulls in the Eastern Conference Semifinals. Or Houston Rockets coach Kevin McHale, whose decision to use the Hack-a-Shaq tactic so early in Game 4 of the Western Conference Semifinals against the Los Angeles Clippers not only didn't work but sparked a storm of insults from the Staples Center crowd.
Just nine games into his first postseason as a coach, Golden State Warriors coach Steve Kerr has already seen all sides of this unforgiving and unrelenting experience. Nothing – not even the five championships he won as a player, the time he spent as a general manager of the Phoenix Suns or all playoff games he analyzed up close as a television commentator – could truly have prepared him for this. And while he's riding high at the moment, his key adjustments in Game 4 against the Memphis Grizzlies having turned the tide of this tough Western Conference Semifinals series that they hope to close out in Game 6 on Friday night, he's not about to bask in the glow of his own headlines.
"The importance as a coach (is) to not read or listen to anything, and just kind of lock in on the job at hand," said Kerr, who had no coaching experience of any kind before signing a five-year, $25 million deal with the Warriors last summer. "You try to convey the same thing to your team, because what happens is there's a heightened sense of scrutiny. There's a lot of storylines, and you can't worry about any of that. I've talked to our team about that, and I think it's important for our staff to follow through on that too.
"It's very different, because in the regular season you just move on from one game to the next. Everybody in the league is scrambling and traveling (during the playoffs), and you just don't have the time to lock in … (The opponent will) take things away, and you make dramatic adjustments. But it's fun. This is competition. This is why I came back on the competitive side of it."
And if you're going to read a story, Kerr has told his team, then you're better off making it the non-sports variety. Because of all the chaos that comes with this playoff experience, he tries to take an hour a day to pick up a book. The latest selection is 'All the Light We Cannot See,' a Pulitzer Prize winning World War II fiction novel by Anthony Doerr.
"I always did this as a player, too," Kerr said of reading. "Try to get locked into a good book. If you can get an hour a day where you just get lost in thoughts and forget about the game a little bit, it's a good respite."
Because before long, of course, that spotlight will be white-hot again.
"The criticalness of the decisions that you make at any time, and the weight of that (are big)," said Memphis' second-year coach, Dave Joerger, who spent 10 years coaching in the minor leagues and NBA Development League before becoming a Grizzlies assistant in 2007 and head coach in the 2013 offseason. "If you get into second-guessing yourself, or you're afraid to make a move because it might hurt somebody's feelings, or 'You know what? I might get fired if I do this, but I think it's the right thing to do, but I'm not going to do that.' You can't be afraid to lose your job to keep your job. You've got to make decisions that are what you think is right, you have to be decisive about it, and I'm really lucky that I got the opportunity to do it in the minor leagues."
Kerr is a prime example of how quickly the narrative that surrounds a coach can change – even within his own locker room. The Warriors were the NBA's best in the regular season, winning 67 games and inspiring pundits everywhere – save perhaps for TNT's Charles Barkley – to predict that the championship would eventually be theirs. But nothing they'd done in the pre-playoff world mattered anymore once they dropped Game 2 and Game 3 to the Grizzlies, and Kerr found himself faced with his first daunting test. So, he had to consider, what to do with an off-day in Memphis that would have everything to do with their state of mind heading into Game 4?
Kerr raised a few eyebrows when he decided not to have his team practice. He held an extended film session instead, making the Warriors see – play by painful play – all the ways in which they weren't playing their game. When it was over, he let them know that there was going to be an outside-the-box change to their defensive plan. Their seven-foot, 260-pound center, Andrew Bogut, would be guarding the the 6-foot-4 Tony Allen, though "guarding" is a relative term: he would play off of Allen, daring him to shoot while then being free to double-team Warriors killer Zach Randolph with Harrison Barnes down low.
"After we watched that (Game 3) loss that was brutal, he said, 'All right, now we're going to talk about those adjustments,'" Warriors forward Draymond Green told Paste BN Sports. "Here's how we're going to guard Z-Bo (Randolph), and this is why we're going to be able to guard him like this. And he went into the adjustment. Great adjustment.
"I wasn't really dicey on (the move). I kind of saw the picture of what he had in mind, so I wasn't really dicey on it, but you still wonder. The first time you try something, it can look good on paper and on film and you can say, 'Alright, this is what we're doing.' But you still don't know if it's going to work. I think it was phenomenal."
Barnes, whose lateral quickness and athleticism helped him keep up with the crafty Randolph, wasn't sure what to think at first either.
"Man, there were a lot of wild reactions (when Kerr shared his decision)," Barnes said. "We didn't know if coach maybe didn't get any sleep last night, or if he was throwing in the towel. It was unheard of. No one would have thought that we were going to put Bogs on Tony Allen. But you've got to give (Kerr) credit. That was genius thinking to think outside the box, to do something (like that). It worked, and had them flustered and I think it got us off on the right step to how we need to play and got our communication tight."
The thing that impressed Barnes even more, though, was that Kerr acted as if there was nothing unorthodox about what he was doing. His confidence was contagious in the kind of way that they have grown accustomed to.
"One of (Kerr's) best friends who is our skills guy, Bruce Fraser, he always jokes around about how coach's nickname is 'Ice,'" Barnes said. "He's always cool under pressure, so we always joke around with him about that. But when (Kerr) said that, he said it very calm. It wasn't like, 'Hey guys, we're going to do something very unconventional in a pivotal game for us.' It was like, 'All right, Bogs (Bogut) is going to guard Tony Allen and we're going to go from there.' And it was like, 'Wow, OK. Let's see how this goes.' He was calm as ice. He's just poised. He thought outside the box and it worked. You've got to give him credit. That's a big move for a rookie coach."
One who is getting more acquainted with this one-of-a-kind playoff experience by the day.