Steph Curry on organized chaos: “the organized part is a big deal”

[practice videos/interviews/transcripts]

“Fire Kerr” is obviously a familiar refrain in the Comments of any video we post on our YouTube channel, so maybe it’s time to revisit why Steve Kerr is the Warriors’ coach.

First of all, I must admit, I had my reservations of whether or not the ecosystem built for one Wardell Stephen Curry, dating back to Sunmer 2014 and the evolution of it since its origins with a great passing big like Andrew Bogut and the second greatest shooter of all-time in Klay Thompson as integral parts, would work when you have a bunch of young non-flashy guys and a former lacrosse player running point for the latest version of it — not to mention the actual “sun” of the franchise “solar system” absent.

But against teams that either don't have a closer or a closer in Donovan Mitchell who simply missed a game-tying shot at the buzzer, the ecosystem actually worked. It even almost worked against another team with a bonafide closer in Tyrese Maxey, all on the road, to boot.

Meanwhile, the one flashy guy, Jonathan Kuminga, is just 8-for-his-last-32 — a non-insignificant portion of those as missed mid-rangers, but that's okay. A slump is a slump and maybe scaling back on the talented shot creation is needed for a reset for him. I'm optimistic about Kuminga and there’s still 16 games to go before that trade-eligible date of January 15th:

Also, I think JK will play better when facing less double-teams with the presence of Curry. I'm curious to see how he fits back into the rotation, which may require Gui Santos to first make a couple mistakes. And no one on this team is mistake-free, not even Pat Spencer, who by the way completely lost VJ Edgecombe on that game-winning tip-in in Philadelphia. Still, Spencer tends to have way more play-makes than brain farts and him on the court with Curry is going to be intriguing.

Conclusion: “Fire Steve” doesn’t make any logical sense right now. It may have, when we lost to the Clippers late last season and JK’s replacement, Gary Payton II, fouled James Harden beyond the arc at a crucial moment, but not right now.

If anything, it’s peak “Keep Kerr” in this particular moment, more so than at any time since… the 2022 Finals?

One more thing. Draymond Green had a quote for Marcus Thompson of The Athletic which suggests he’s aware of his penchant for turnovers: https://www.nytimes.com/athletic/6881099/2025/12/11/golden-state-warriors-turnover-problems-stephen-curry-jimmy-butler/

“It’s just different now,” Green said. “We don’t have the same margin of error we used to have. And you feel how people are very excited to play us. So they’re already hype. If you fuel that with live-ball turnovers and fast breaks, their confidence soars. Then it’s a free-for-all.”

I love it, how Steve now just has simple ammunition for his most turnover-prone guys in Draymond and Steph: you win the turnover battle, you win the game; 9-1 when they commit fewer turnovers than the opponent and 1-9 when they don’t — although this was at the 20-game mark and they’ve now played 25 games.

So, that should naturally help Kerr as we keep going, i.e., more and more fans will or should be completely aware that the Warriors committing turnovers is not really a Steve issue, it’s a Steph-Dray issue and the numbers support that.

Let's first hear from Steve on the podium after practice yesterday:

Well, Steph does stuff that we don't necessarily draw up. He's so good running off screens that organically stuff just opens up. When he happens to be in the middle of the paint and the ball starts to move and there's, then there's just a random pin down, so you have to be ready for that randomness because what Steph creates is chaotic for the defense. He's a threat everywhere he's on the floor. And so the defense always has to react to that. And if you're smart and you can pass, then you can take advantage of that chaos.

And then Steph himself, yesterday:

The organized chaos is, yeah, I play fast. I can play on the ball, off the ball. The play starts once I get off of it because I’m either running out the other side of the court, coming off a screen, trying to create attention no matter where I am on the floor. I don’t think it’s hard to play. It’s just an adjustment of the reads that you need to make and how fast they happen, but the organized part of it is a big deal because there are certain patterns that you see more often than others in the sense of where I’m at, where the ball is at and what options you have, whether you’re gonna screen, whether you’re gonna cut, whether you’re gonna stay spaced to shoot, whatever the case is. Reps help and being in that situation where you get to see the pictures, it’s a little bit easier, but it’s a fun way to play because you don’t really know who’s gonna get it on any possession. The ball usually finds the open guy.

Assuming the sun gets back to shining brightly, and Dray — when he's fully healthy — and Jimmy Butler are themselves (read: don’t commit too many turnovers), with the young guys clicking, Buddy Hield rising to his personal challenge…

…and De’Anthony Melton causing some havoc on both ends, does this mean the only downward-trending variable left is to get JK back to doing things that are ecosystem-worthy?

Probably not. Probably there’s some other variable that pops up that cannot be predicted. That's just the game of basketball for ya.

But there should be as much anticipation going into tonight’s game versus Minnesota as there ever has been, even with Draymond and Al Horford still out.

Here are all the videos from the last two practices. I'll have to point to the Comments of each video for all the transcriptions. 👇

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