How Steph Curry Influenced Steve Kerr's Decision To Return To Warriors

How Steph Curry influenced Steve Kerr's decision to return to Warriors originally appeared on NBC Sports Bay Area

For a full year, Steve Kerr told himself that 12 years as head coach of the Warriors might be enough.

For the past few weeks, Kerr wondered if he wanted more but couldn’t shake the thought that 12 years probably would be enough.

Kerr over the past few days decided he wanted more. And on Saturday, after all conditions were satisfied, agreed to two-year contract with the Warriors. The deal was first reported by ESPN and confirmed by NBC Sports Bay Area.

Why would a 60-year-old basketball coach want more after earning roughly $100 million and winning four championship rings with Golden State that guarantees enshrinement in the Hall of Fame?

There are several reasons, including Kerr’s passion for the game, but his decision to return is inextricably linked to his 12-year collaboration with Stephen Curry. If Curry had announced his retirement on Friday, it’s likely that Kerr would have followed him out the door.

“I will never leave Steph Curry,” Kerr told Zena Keita on The Athletic Show last December.

Five months later, while addressing his future with the Warriors after the team’s season-ending loss in the NBA play-in tournament, Kerr cited Curry’s presence as a determining factor.

“It’s part of the equation,” Kerr acknowledged on April 17. “I don’t want to walk away from Steph.”

So, he won’t. Not now. Probably not before Curry walks away from the Warriors.

Parting ways with Curry would amount to a professional divorce that surely could harbor some of the same emotions as a marital divorce after a relatively peaceful and prosperous union. For Kerr, it would mean wonderful memories being relegated to the past. Both parties, after all they built, could feel a sense of abandonment. The process could include second and third guessing. Saying goodbye to yesterday, as the classic song suggests, can be so hard.

An hour after he shared a few words and an embrace with fellow four-ring club members Draymond Green and Curry in the waning seconds of the play-in loss, it was apparent the coach was grappling with those feelings. His sentiment came with a hint of tremble.

“Steph’s still got it,” Kerr said on April 17. “You watched the other night. I mean, he can still do it. But it just gets more difficult as you get older. He plays a different game than a lot of other older players or more experienced players around the league whether it’s Kevin Durant or LeBron. It’s very different. Steph is flying off screens. He travels further distance than anybody in the league year after year. So, obviously, the injury at the end of the season was difficult for him to deal with. He did an amazing job of just getting back to this point. And that game the other night will go down as one of my favorite games we’ve ever played.”

The referenced game the other night was the play-in opener on April 15, featuring Curry scoring 35 points in 36 minutes, draining seven triples and generally twisting the Los Angeles Clippers’ defense into knots – one month after his 38th birthday.

Curry’s status as an enduring impact player is perhaps the primary personnel reason for Kerr’s decision. Now that he’ll return next season alongside the team’s heliocentric component, another significant factor is the rest of Golden State’s roster.

That’s where CEO Joe Lacob and general manager Mike Dunleavy come in. They sit atop a front office that has final word on roster building. A cursory glance at last season and the current NBA playoffs serve as proof the Warriors, even at their healthiest, would have struggled to finish among the top six teams in the Western Conference. 

Kerr surely knows reaching that level next season will be even more of a challenge if the front office can’t make a couple impact moves. Lacob and Dunleavy will be in the thick of the hunt, according to multiple league and team sources, but they’ve learned that hunting talent is not the same as acquiring it.

As the Warriors wade toward the most consequential offseason since Lacob and his partners bought the team in 2010, they’ll do so with the same coach they hired in May 2014. Kerr. He wasn’t sure, and neither were they. One potential personnel change has been made.

It’s fitting that Curry, the greatest player in franchise history, had significant influence on Kerr wanting to be involved in what’s to come.

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