

























No leaks? No rush to a decision? No obvious outcome after too many hints and public nudges?
A very dramatic situation that actually has had no daily drama?
At some point relatively soon — maybe by Monday — Steve Kerr and the Warriors will come to a decision about his future and explain what happens next.
But until that revelation, one big thing about this process has become undeniable: This is a one-of-one NBA moment because it’s been so wholly unpredictable and so authentically undecided for so long.
Nobody knows how this will turn out. Truly. Inside and outside the organization, probably including Kerr (at least as of late last week), nobody knows. And that, folks, is staggeringly rare; things at this level are almost always decided long before the end of a season, a contract, or two or three media cycles.
Traditionally, if an extremely high-profile coach/player/executive says it might be time to leave — the way Kerr emphasized it after the play-in loss to Phoenix back on April 17 — the decision to actually exit usually has been made. The words are just the summary.
Not in this case. Which tells us a lot about Kerr, about Joe Lacob and Mike Dunleavy, about Stephen Curry (yes, it’s always about Curry when immense Warriors decisions are made), and about the tenuous future of this franchise.
It tells us a lot about a group of people who ideally want everybody to stay together for at least another season but haven’t quite figured out how to do it. It tells us that they’re not back-biting. It tells us that they’re patient and they know that it’s logical to have some doubts right now.
And it tells us that they know they will miss each other when this is over.
All of these emotions aren’t the main reasons the Warriors won four titles and so many memorable games (all the way up to their first play-in game over the Clippers). That’s about talent and perseverance. But this is trace evidence of how it happened and what lingers when it happens.
Really, this could be the most ethical stay-or-go coaching decision in recent sports history. Which is also why it’s taking so long.
Everybody I talk to indicates that the Warriors know that Kerr remains their best coaching option and that Kerr knows that this probably remains the best job he’ll ever have. (Yeah, that’s the Curry factor.)
And both sides are committed to making sure nothing is done or whispered that messes up the chance to keep this going.
“Whatever happens,” one person involved in the situation said, “nobody’s going to be mad.”
Just go back to May 2014, the last time the Warriors changed coaches, when the drumbeat for Mark Jackson’s exit was so loud that the firing announcement a few days after the team’s playoff exit was an obvious anticlimax.
Or switching sports, remember when the 49ers unofficially fired Jim Harbaugh via a flood of leaks well before the December 2014 “mutual separation.”
Get to the end of a contract then both sides sit around and think about it for a few weeks after the conclusion of a disappointing season? That’s unique.
I suspect that Kerr’s been chatting with his old coach Phil Jackson, who set up his final Bulls season in 1997-98 (with Kerr as a player) as a “Last Dance” knowing that the Bulls had already decided to move on from him.
But Kerr never wanted all the ceremony and presumptions of a “Last Dance.” That would’ve been a distracting disservice to Curry, who is definitely sticking around, and the rest of the team. Still, after Jimmy Butler was lost for the season, you could tell there was a change in Kerr’s tone.
And we all can definitely connect that mood to the preliminary elegy Kerr gave after the play-in loss.
But ESPN reported that he and Lacob and Dunleavy met last Monday with no final decision and a plan to meet again this week, after Kerr kept his weekend golf-trip plans.
So Kerr wasn’t ready to tell the Warriors goodbye last week. We’ll see what happens this week.
To be clear, Kerr can play it this way because he knows he’ll have plenty of opportunities to do other interesting and well-compensated things as soon as he leaves the Warriors.
He also is at peace with what he’s accomplished with the Warriors and with the idea that it might be time for somebody with new ideas and possibly with a much different roster.
That’s why Kerr declined to talk about an extension before this season, when most coaches angle for new deals well before any expiring date. That’s why he embraced the uncertainty.
And I think, especially over the last few weeks, Kerr also wanted to feel what it’d be like to be the ex-Warrior coach. You don’t do that two-hour New Yorker interview if you’re not intrigued by dangling your feet over the precipice. You don’t spend a lot of time with star ESPN feature writer Wright Thompson over the last few weeks of the season if you’re not contemplating the end of the road.
But Kerr still needs more time. And he’s getting it.
Though I understand the idea that Kerr might feel a lot freer to speak out on political and social issues once he leaves the Warriors, I’ve heard no indication that Lacob and Dunleavy have ever suggested that Kerr should tone down his commentary.
And I wouldn’t expect that to be any part of the current talks.
This also could realistically be turned the other way: Kerr speaking as the Warriors’ coach hits harder because it’s within and occasionally pushing against the context of his role as a famous employee in a mega-billion-dollar league that might not love every word of it.
It’s certainly possible that Lacob in particular wouldn’t mind if his coach didn’t wander into controversial territory as often as Kerr does. Maybe there’s been a raised eyebrow or glancing suggestion that sponsorship efforts or suite sales aren’t always helped by the commentary.
But the outspokenness also, by this point, is both an essential component of the entire Kerr package and something Curry and other players deeply admire; I absolutely believe that Lacob and Dunleavy understand it and in many ways admire Kerr for it, too.
此内容由惯性聚合(RSS阅读器)自动聚合整理,仅供阅读参考。 原文来自 — 版权归原作者所有。