WINNING FOR A FALLEN COACH WOULD BE THE LAST CHANCE FOR THE WARRIORS
A dynasty is in the past tense — 18-22 record, 12th in the West, Draymond left off Team USA, big trades possible —and we’re left to ask if Steve Kerr will stay long term following last week’s tragedy
The antonyms of a dance: a mope, a sulk, a tank. As a shooter who firearmed the ball for a team that finished “The Last Dance” in cinema, and bittersweet life, Steve Kerr might physically fade if the Golden State Warriors don’t negotiate a playoff run. What’s happening in the Western Conference is a forlorn 18-22 record, worthy of 12th place, meaning Utah and Houston must flop just to reach the play-in event.
If the season fails, owner Joe Lacob will have Stephen Curry at 36, still capable of regenerating human senses and winning glory. But will anybody else be with him? Klay Thompson must be sent elsewhere to reclaim hope. Andrew Wiggins is a bust. The younger players, Jonathan Kuminga and Moses Moody, aren’t virtuous enough in Kerr’s mind to stand with the four-time-champion soldiers. And Draymond Green, who went away for 16 games because he struck Jusuf Nurkic in the face, which came after he placed Rudy Gobert in a vicious chokehold amid a career of lowbrow and shameful acts?
The United States of America doesn’t want him trying out for the Olympic team that will play in Paris. Green’s two gold medals, from Tokyo and Rio de Janeiro, no longer matter internationally. Nor would Kerr’s role as head coach. “I think just in lieu of what has transpired this year,” said Grant Hill, executive director of USA Basketball, “we made a decision to not have him on this list with this particular point in time with the process. He’s working through some things both on and off the court. And we wanted to support him on his journey, and we didn’t feel that playing over the summer gives him the best opportunity to do what he needs to do.”
For faith, for trust in our actual existence, it would be heavenly to watch the coaches and players relocate themselves after the death of Dejan Milojevic. Last week, during a private team dinner at Valter’s Osteria in Salt Lake City, the assistant coach collapsed and died of a heart attack. Coaches, five players, trainers and staff members — all witnessed the horror. Kerr was 18 when he lost his father, who was shot by gunmen as president of the American University of Beirut. He hasn’t been the same in days and wants all comers to remember Milojevic with touches of love and memory, including the “DM” patch on the team’s uniforms.
“It’s a pretty terrible thing to witness. It’s heartbreaking, devastating,” Kerr said. “It’s just the saddest thing I’ve ever been a part of in the NBA. We lose someone who is so close to us. More importantly, seeing his family suffer. It has been filled with the shock, the emotion, the extreme outpouring of love from around the world.
“Everybody on our team, everybody in our organization is traumatized. Part of life is you experience loss. Everyone is going to experience loss at some point in their life. But it doesn’t often happen in front of you. It doesn’t often happen to someone with kids and it doesn’t happen where it’s someone who is so beloved. So everything that’s happened has been just jarring, just incredibly emotional, powerful, and more than anything heartbreaking.”
Emotions were heavy Wednesday night at Chase Center, where the Warriors were mourning and grieving and, somehow, trying to fix the season. Their previous two games were postponed. “I literally could picture Deki smiling, laughing and saying, ‘You motherf---ers need to go win a basketball game,’ ” Kerr said. “We are going to do everything we can to win and we're going to enjoy life no matter what. That's who he was and how we're going to continue.”
Will lamenting one’s loss be enough? We were busy watching Green, who needed to channel passions in thoroughly productive ways and not devolve into nil. We knew what to expect from Curry and Thompson, dignity and esteem. But what about Kerr, who took over this team 10 years ago and launched a dynasty as he turned loose the original Splash Brothers? Who knows how much he has left with the team’s best clearly in the past? Would he avoid a new organizational mode and go away, while new general manager Mike Dunleavy Jr. starts anew? The stature of the Nuggets, who could win more NBA championships, makes it difficult to think he’ll remain second-tier with the rise of the Thunder and Timberwolves.
Carrying on makes no sense for Lacob, a doer who once said his team is “light years ahead of probably every other team.” Would he let his cause fall into a dark age? He gave Green a $100 million contract last offseason, an error. Thompson won’t receive the same favor, entering his final year at $43 million. Chris Paul, who turns 39 in May, is out for six weeks after sustaining a fractured hand. Why keep graybeards together to see if they finish 10th and pray they can beat Sacramento, which would position them for an opening-round sweep against Denver or young guns in Oklahoma City or Minnesota? The trade deadline is Feb. 8. Dunleavy alluded to it when he said last month, “That will determine where we go.” Especially when Green, his pride wounded, continues to badger teammates as he did after a loss to a Memphis team without Ja Morant, Desmond Bane and Marcus Smart.
“You have to have pride in yourself, that I’m not going to let my guy score,” he said. “Our closeouts were too soft and our rotations were too slow, so it’s just no pride. Until every guy takes pride in themselves and wants to stop the guy in front of them, we’ll suck. We can’t guard nobody. So until we guard, we’ll lose.”
Aren’t we all sick of Green? As we debate whether he belongs in the Hall of Fame after his plethora of tantrum blowups? For all the fan admiration involving Curry and Thompson, Green’s continuing presence is better off elsewhere. Does TNT really want to employ him permanently on “Inside The NBA” when Charles Barkley leaves? His character has been flawed for years. If the Warriors could trade him and the final 3 1/2 years of his deal — assuming LeBron James or the Phoenix Suns would take a stab — Lacob could begin to move on.
For now, we’ll see how humans respond to a tragedy before their eyes. “There is no handbook for this,” Kerr said. Playing like champions helps.
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Jay Mariotti, called “without question the most impacting Chicago sportswriter of the past quarter-century,’’ writes general sports columns for Substack while appearing on some of the 1,678,498 podcasts and shows in production today. He is an accomplished columnist, TV panelist and talk/podcast host. Living in Los Angeles, he gravitated by osmosis to film projects.