Warriors need an answer on Steve Kerr soon

The Warriors just dismissed another playoff opponent four games to zero Monday night and everything seems to be going well for them. But one issue looms over the postseason.

Steve Kerr. He is the eight-hundred-pound gorilla in the room.

Or not in the room. He is out of the room. His issue is his absence. Kerr has missed the past six games due to complications from a back surgery he had in 2015, complications which also forced him to miss 43 games last season.

For the past two years, the Warriors have had one-and-a-half head coaches: the interim head coach (first Luke Walton, now Mike Brown) — and the head coach, Kerr, who fades in and out of the picture.

A championship team needs to have one coach, not one and a half. Not knowing who the coach is can be confusing and disruptive over the long haul. If Kerr’s condition doesn’t permanently improve soon, say by July, he should step down or the Warriors should permanently replace him.

Click here to read the rest of my Wednesday column.

This article has 32 Comments

    1. TrollD, only a Raiders fan would accuse me of not being a die hard faithful Niner fan.

      I remember you cheering for the Raiders.

  1. Kerr may miss the playoffs, but he’ll be back to full strength next season. If not, Brown is a good replacement.

  2. It’s basketball-does the coach really matter? It’s the most overrated sport for titles and Coaching. One player usually dominates the sport for a decade or more-Magic, Jordon, Kobi now Lebron. Not that Phil Jackson wasn’t good, but Those teams with Jordon & then Kobi would have probably won 11 combined titles with Grant as HC:)

    1. Still better than baseball where all teams end up winning ~50% of there games. Just look at the Giants, they’re 11-23 and people are saying it’s early and that they have a chance. You start that way in Basketball and you’re dead. Baseball is like flipping a coin – you end up with 50% chance of heads or tails. So why even play the games? Just flip a coin to decide who goes to the playoffs.

      1. SRPD needs new IT guys for sure …. maybe the good ones leave periodically to work for NBC Bay Area and Chron …

  3. Grant,
    The new format sucks. The comments bleed into the side bar. You have to hit ‘tab’ (several times) in order to access the “Post Comment” button.

  4. The Warriors will keep Kerr whether he can coach on a regular basis or not. He will stay as a part time HC if he can’t be there everyday. They will need hire a good game coach to take over if Kerr can’t go and pay him HC money. The real question is will Kerr want to continue if his health isn’t 100%

  5. Grant, the Warriors have one coach — Kerr — and no one wants to see him go, except you, apparently.
    I wanted to add more to my sentence, but I couldn’t see my words due to the “bleeding.”
    Getting back to Kerr: He’s a gem. Give him the time he needs. The team is too focused and professional to care. They almost don’t need a coach.

    A comment on the new format: It truly sucks. The “bleeding” is one issue. The font size is another.
    Was this a junior high school project? Seriously.

  6. Warriors show important it is to have quality players, and if they are skilled enough, it does not matter who the coach is.

    The problem occurs when the 2 teams are equal, and then the coaching may make the difference between winning and losing.

    Bill Walsh showed how critical coaching was when he took an inferior team and won with it. Then he built a juggernaut, and won with that, too.

    Fortunately, this is not the case with the Warriors,and they should do well because they are battle tested by being in the finals for the past 2 seasons.

    I hope Steve Kerr can finally get his problem fixed, and can resume coaching. If not, I hope he can at least stop the pain, and I wish him Godspeed.

    However, Kerr may turn his unfortunate predicament into a positive, because the players will rally around him, and try to win even harder, just for him.

  7. Sure. I realize this column is just something to crate some controversy where there is none.

  8. Grant,
    Tell your IT guys that their new layout is now dependent on screen resolution. On my laptop with HD res, it looks fine, but it badly bleeds into the edge on my desktop screen (res: 1440 by 900).

    1. There’s no bleeding on my end. Can you post a screen shot of what you mean?

      1. Grant,

        I saw the problem last night on my home desktop with lower res. I’m at work now and it looks fine. Other posters have commented in a manner that suggests the problem may have been fixed. I’ll check this evening.

        BTW, how does one post a picture on your blog?

        1. Take a screen shot (function+end), paste the screen shot in “paint,” save the file, upload the file into tinypic (tinypic.com), paste the url of the tiny pic in the comment box, post the comment.

  9. Sucks for Kerr. I expect him to retire next month. He is against surgery, but surgery may be the only thing that can help him. A migraine here and there is bad. Not knowing if you’ll get one every day makes it hard to make plans.

    Off topic but my biggest complaint about yesterday’s site change is that I couldn’t post from all of my devices. The site seems to be fixed today though.

    1. Kerr’s problem is that he has had surgery twice and it has failed. The failures caused the spinal fluid leak that causes extreme headaches. They did a second procedure to stop the spinal fluid leak in the past few days. If that procedure works, his migraine problem should go away.

      It appears that the old software has been reloaded. Making web pages work effectively on a variety of variable platforms takes extensive testing. My guess is that the IT folks are using packaged software that they don’t fully understand. They also don’t seem to have a large enough group of test platforms for adequate testing.

  10. Your IT guy is looking pretty professional now. My goodness, a much sharper look plus a white leather background! I take back what I said earlier. This iteration is an improvement, definitely. You should have mentioned it was a work in progress. If you did, I apologize for not seeing it. The “feel” of this blog has become extremely cool, for lack of a better word.

    Grant, may I suggest one thing, and this isn’t a barb. I think it’s time to switch your picture to a more current one. You’re not a rookie anymore and I recommend that you project an older image.

Comments are closed.