During his first five years on the bench of the Warriors, between 2014 and 2019, Steve Kerr drew one of the most beautiful attacks in the recent history of the league. The basketball offered by Stephen Curry, Draymond Green and Klay Thompson was collective, fluid and always in motion. Great show.
Then, in recent seasons, it has faded somewhat. Even though the Warriors finished the regular season with the eighth most efficient offense, we no longer find the charm of the first years.
“We're still going to do a lot of the things we were doing, we can't deviate from what worked, but I need to teach things better”, assures the coach. “I need to simplify things, maybe give the players a better model of what I want us to achieve. »
Steve Kerr judges that if his players attack better, they will defend better too. “The offense can help the defense. It’s always linked”, he slips. It is thanks to defense that the Warriors have returned to the heights in 2022 and this season, they have sought again and again a balance on this side of the floor.
A team that can no longer afford to make mistakes
How does the coach explain his players' offensive difficulties for several years?
“We had a unique style for ten years, based on Curry and Thompson's off-ball movement, and Green's unique ability to be a playmaker. We had special players, so our style was special, too,” notes the coach of Team USA. “Sometimes it was planned, sometimes it was transformed into a way of doing things. We also lost a lot of balls because we played with a lot of freedom. In recent years, our team was not built to resist mistakes and loose balls, nor for this freedom. So I have to help the players so that they are in a better position to make better decisions. »
Proof that this team is fragile: it has lost 14 matches despite having led by 10 points or more, including 8 times at Chase Center. And when we know that the Warriors finished three victories from the Top 6 in the Western Conference, obviously, that counts…
“How did we waste these advances? Why didn't we win the close matches? It's my fault, it's our fault, it must be said.” comments Steve Kerr. “My responsibility is to simplify our attack, to ensure that the players are in a good position to make the decisions that count at the end of the game. »
