Source: Steve Kerr Returning To Warriors With New Two-year Contract, Per Agency

Source: Steve Kerr returning to Warriors with new two-year contract, per agency originally appeared on NBC Sports Bay Area

Steve Kerr isn’t going anywhere.

Despite early speculation that the 2025-26 NBA season was Kerr’s last with the Warriors, the 60-year-old coach will return for at least two more seasons.

Kerr has reached an agreement in principle with Golden State on a new two-year contract, a source confirmed to NBC Sports Bay Area’s Dalton Johnson on Saturday.

ESPN’s Shams Charania was the first to report the news of the agreement between Kerr and the Warriors

The new deal will keep Steve Kerr as the highest-paid coach in the NBA annually, sources told ESPN.

Last week, NBC Sports Bay Area’s Monte Poole reported that people close to the Warriors who initially believed Kerr would leave had changed course and indicated a “reasonable possibility” he returns.

That reporting came a few days after ESPN’s Shams Charania, Anthony Slater and Ramona Shelburne reported that Kerr met with Warriors CEO Joe Lacob and general manager Mike Dunleavy on Monday, April 24.

Per ESPN, those initial discussions were deemed “productive” by both sides.

And those productive talks turned into a new contract for Kerr. But, for a few weeks at the end of the season, it was a toss-up as to whether the long-time coach and the only team he has ever coached would get to this point.

The Warriors’ 2025-26 NBA season ended with a disappointing play-in loss to the Phoenix Suns on April 17, and after the game, Kerr admitted he wasn’t sure about what the future held.

“My plan is to take a little time, I don’t know,” Kerr told reporters. “Take a week or two and eventually sit down and talk with [owner Joe Lacob and general manager Mike Dunleavy]. We’ve always had a great partnership and collaboration and just see where they are and I’ll tell them where I am, and we’ll talk about what’s next for the Warriors, what the plan is this offseason. And we will come to a collaborative decision on what’s next.

“I don’t know what’s going to happen. I still love coaching, but I get it. These jobs all have an expiration date. There’s a run that happens. When the run ends, it’s sometimes it’s time for new blood and new ideas and all that. If that’s the case, then I will be just nothing but grateful for the most amazing opportunity any person could have to coach this franchise, in front of our fans in the Bay and to coach Steph Curry and coach [Draymond Green] and the whole group. So, it may still go on. It may not. I don’t know at this point. But we all need to step away a little bit and reconvene.”

Towards the end of the Warriors’ season-ending loss, Kerr embraced franchise icons Steph Curry and Draymond Green, and left them with a simple but ominous message.

“I don’t know what’s going to happen next, but I love you guys to death,” Kerr told Curry and Green. “Thank you.”

Less than a week after that moment between Kerr, Curry and Green, multiple sources told NBC Sports Bay Area’s Monte Poole that, barring a renewed faith that prompted a change of heart, the belief was that the 60-year-old coach wouldn’t return for a 13th season.

But after talking with Lacob and Dunleavy, Kerr has decided to stick around for at least one more season.

Kerr initially was hired in May 2014, and in 12 seasons with the Warriors, won four championships (2015, ’17, ’18 and ’22) with a dynastic core of Curry, Green and Klay Thompson.

Throughout Golden State’s disappointing 2025-26 season, Kerr remained steadfast in his belief in the potential of the team’s roster when healthy.

The Warriors were hampered by injuries, specifically to Curry and star forward Jimmy Butler, but now with an entire offseason ahead to rest up and re-tool the roster, Golden State — led again by Kerr — will have another opportunity to compete for a fifth championship next season.

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