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Steve Kerr’s ongoing decision is unfolding behind closed doors. Whether he’ll continue coaching the Warriors is an unsolved mystery. 

Per ESPN (opens in new tab), Kerr and the Warriors’ top decision-makers met Monday for two hours and plan to reconvene next week. 

It has been almost two weeks since Kerr’s dramatic comments after Golden State’s play-in exit. The Warriors have since given the coach time with his family and space to reflect on his future, conscious not to rush his process. 

That’s not the posture of a team content with moving on with a different coach or secretly hoping to make a change. Nudging the ball toward Kerr’s half of the court is the position of a team that knows what it has in Kerr and doesn’t want to lose him.

The Warriors want a coach who’s fully committed, brings creative ideas, and has the energy to scratch and claw for wins. They better hope that coach’s name is Stephen Douglas Kerr.

If Kerr and the team decide he doesn’t fit that description, Pandora’s box flies open.

One of the most stable structures in the league would suddenly become rickety, flushed out by brain drain over the past decade. Givens like Steph Curry and Draymond Green’s desire to finish their careers with Golden State could become less certain. 

As long as Curry and Green are on the team, the Warriors owe it to them to try to put together a playoff-level roster. Even if a full rebuild might be shrewd in a vacuum, Golden State can’t do it with the best player the franchise will ever have still competing. The Warriors might not push all their future draft picks into the middle of the poker table, but they won’t dishonor Curry and Green with a tank. 

The Warriors’ circumstances make Kerr uniquely equipped to lead the team. 

Kerr has the institutional knowledge and interpersonal relationships to steer this run to its conclusion. It sure seems like everyone knows that. 

Owner Joe Lacob and GM Mike Dunleavy have publicly said they want Kerr back. Curry and Green have said they don’t want to play for anyone else. Kerr insisted throughout last year’s trying season that he still loves coaching.

Now, he needs to decide if he still has the drive to see this job through. Then he and management have to get on the same page about the team’s direction. 

There are worthwhile conversations to be had about how much or how little Kerr should adjust his offensive style, with new personnel and within an evolving league. But those are the types of big-picture discussions practically every coach has at the end of a season. 

The players and coaching staff have already finished their exit interviews. The most accurate reading of the season was that Kerr helped get the most of a remarkably depleted roster that lost Jimmy Butler and Moses Moody to season-ending injuries and Curry for two months. How many other coaches would reach 37 wins with a team whose top-five minutes leaders were Brandin Podziemski, Green, Moody, Gui Santos, and Will Richard? 

Kerr should get dinged for the team’s slow 13-15 start. The Warriors didn’t approach the season with enough urgency, and some of that falls on him. But it’d be hard to imagine anything other than an overall positive performance review. 

The Warriors need Kerr on their sideline because the game hasn’t passed him by. They need him — not a first-time head coach or a former college guy — to de-escalate that first Green flare-up of the season. They need him to manage up to ownership and down to Curry, to maneuver complicated locker-room personalities around the trade deadline.  

It’s possible a hypothetical replacement could do all those things at a level similar to Kerr. A video coordinator named Erik Spoelstra did pretty well in Miami after Pat Riley. The early results on Mitch Johnson as Gregg Popovich’s successor are encouraging. 

But the Warriors have no apparent internal line of succession, making a smooth transition tough. You don’t need to rewatch “The Last Dance” to know how things went after Phil Jackson’s time was up in Chicago (and Kerr knows that history as well as anyone). Then, when Jackson retired from the Lakers in 2011, Los Angeles had its biggest swoon in the Mike Brown-Mike D’Antoni-Byron Scott-Luke Walton era. 

Kerr’s coaching style isn’t the only way that can work, but hiring someone else to direct the final act of Curry’s dynasty seems like an awfully big risk. Remember the last season of “Game of Thrones”?

Meanwhile, Kerr’s personal legacy is secure. He has nine championship rings — four as the Warriors’ head coach — and a gold medal. The Warriors hadn’t won anything for decades before he took over, and they became the sport’s greatest modern dynasty after. He could walk away now and play golf, spend time with his family, work on social causes he cares about, get back into broadcasting, or dip his toe into the college basketball world and be completely fine. Any serious team with a job opening will knock on Kerr’s door for the next decade.

Kerr is one of the most respected leaders in sports (opens in new tab). If he left the Warriors, the world would be his oyster. Heck, Adam Silver only has a few more years on his deal.

But by all accounts, Kerr’s heart is in coaching. He found his calling on the bench, his dream job. It’s partly up to him to decide if he wants to keep realizing it. 

Lacob and Dunleavy want what’s best for the Warriors. Exactly what that is hasn’t yet crystallized.

In a perfect world for the Warriors, Kerr makes it clear soon.