Steph Curry: “Can we rethink how we do things?”
[video/interview/transcript/commentary]
With Jimmy Butler and Moses Moody both on the shelf for awhile, can “organized chaos” evolve yet again to, as one Wardell Stephen Curry put it on the podium after the Warriors were eliminated, “get back to the basics of what makes a good basketball team, a competitive basketball team, every single night”?
Here’s the context: About halfway into the postgame presser, Nick Friedell of The Athletic had this exchange with Steph:
The goal obviously here has always been the title and you guys were consistent from the start of the year that, if everybody was healthy, you felt like you could take some swings and get there. As you see what happened this year, the uncertainty about the summer, do you walk into next year feeling like if you get everybody back healthy with the group that you do have, that you can still at least push for that level?
Yeah, but I think we can approach it differently in the way that we build the year because we started the year with that as an aspiration. I’ve only been in one locker room for the last 17 years. Before you win the title, there was only like those first two years, like, you’re building the foundation for what a championship team looks like, even though you had no idea what that really meant. Then you accomplish it and then everything else is based off of that. And it’s been that way for, since 2015, so I think we can reshape the narrative, like, knowing the back of our mind, like, that is the ultimate goal, but we have to get back to the basics of what makes a good basketball team a competitive basketball team every single night. Understand how, realize how hard it is to win in this league, but can we rethink how we do things with the foundation that we’ve established? We don’t have to keep saying, “Championship, championship championship,” every day, even though we’ve experienced that. It’s, can we just build a foundation again with what this team needs to do, with the way that the game is played now, how fast it is, how young and athletic it is, all of those things? We have to kind of put everything on the drawing board to get back to just being competitive every single night.
Ron Kroichick of the SF Chronicle then followed up:
Is (Steve Kerr) still the right coach for where you guys are and do you agree with it, “Every coach has an expiration date,” or can it go longer?
I think everything we’ve done is unprecedented and there’s only a few examples you can kind of look to in the history of basketball, especially in the modern era where, when we started, again, the way the game is played has changed from 2013-14 when we were kind of ascending to, or ‘14-15 when coach got here, where we were ascending to how it’s played now, roster construction, like, all those things. You have to adapt and evolve, for sure. I think Coach is fully capable of doing that and thinking outside the box as we go, but to his point, and your spirit has to be in it, your mind has to be in it. Your coaching staff, like, every dynamic has to be on that journey with you, so only he can answer that and it sounds like he’s put a lot of thought into it, but we’ll have those conversations where I get to kind of understand where his mindset is because it’s not like he was going to open up to me on that front, over the last, or at any point during the season because we still had a job to do.
As a former coach, I can say that, as thrilling and vintage a performance as we got from Curry in LA, as damaged goods as he looked in Phoenix, they did not deserve to win either game.
You cannot show up and throw the ball to the wrong team twenty times in a do-or-die situation and expect a good outcome. Of course, as Jimmy likes to say, Steph is the ultimate cheat code.
And when fully healthy, the Draymond Green two-man action is probably the most beautiful “shared brain” type of basketball I’ve ever seen:
Individually, Michael Jordan was more of a one-man wrecking crew in the illegal defense era. As far as beautiful basketball goes, “organized chaos” with Klay Thompson spread fifty feet away from Steph felt more like a full team thing.
So, gravity with Curry is definitely still must-watch TV, except that in its present form, when it doesn’t work, the turnovers become layups and kick-spray threes in the modern NBA. It only takes a minute-and-a-half for 10-0 runs to happen. That’s where the athleticism comes in.
The Clippers lacking scoring with Darius Garland in foul trouble and Draymond doing a number defending Kawhi Leonard straight up helped brew the perfect storm for them, but what might have been lost in the shuffle is the fact that the Warriors had reached twenty turnovers at around the ten-minute mark of Q4 in LA.
Mathematically, that’s 20 turnovers in 38 minutes of play. They were on pace for 25 turnovers, but they went the final ten minutes without committing a single turnover.
It’s all documented here:
But then, 45 hours later in Phoenix, the Dubs reverted back to the same bad habits and started the game averaging about one turnover per minute again, with a near-identical 13-2 deficit by the time Kerr had to burn his first timeout:
I am definitely relieved, though, that Steph himself acknowledged the need to evolve.
It does seem odd if Steve is not at the helm for this next evolution. We’ll cover this more in the next week, but I also think a lot of that really comes down to the Draft Lottery.
I would not be surprised if Joe Lacob waits until after May 10th, the date of the Lottery, to decide on Kerr’s fate.
If Golden State somehow gets lucky with the ping pong balls and lands a Top Four pick, then you must play that Top Four pick next season in heavy rotation minutes and you cannot allow another Jonathan Kuminga situation to happen.
Two roster spots occupied by $70 million worth of healing ligaments and tendons until January 2027, at the earliest, demand such.
Even the 11th pick, or 12th through 14th, should GSW be leapfrogged with an unfavorable Lottery — or whatever roster moves are to be made with that pick or another roster spot — you must start playing other pieces!
By the way, Eric Guilleminault of NBADraft.net hopped on postgame after the Phoenix loss to give us a primer for the 2026 Draft:
It is a fluid situation and the Draft Combine could move guys up or down on mock boards around that 11th pick. There will definitely be a ton more headed your way pertaining to the Draft, coming up.
So I think everyone sees the writing on the wall: the turnover issue must be solved. Even Kerr himself at one point early in the season, before Butler went down, said that the turnovers were up to Curry and Green.
Jimmy became the calming force to the organized chaos. There were four games of this where it finally gelled, then he went down.
The basketball gods have a way of regressing things back to the mean, back to how the game should be played.
Organized chaos, as it now hinges on the runner’s knee of a 38-year-old who runs around the most in the NBA, will have to become the exception, not the rule — makes you kinda appreciate prime Klay, ya know?
Steph’s full transcript behind the paywall below will be unlocked at the next post, as are the previous transcripts, or just head to the Comments on YouTube…
00:00 STEPH CURRY, POSTGAME GSW-PHX: I’m gonna take Steve’s lead. Just, we haven’t had any of these conversations, so we all have to kind of assess where we’re at and I’m sure decisions either way will be made, but just the idea of just looking at how we try to make something out of this year is the focus for me and we’ll get to the rest of what the future looks like. But we had a lot of good moments in the locker room, just appreciating the fight and the battle that we had and the ability to try to extend our season. Didn’t go the way we wanted to. We’ll get together stuff later.
00:44 But knowing that it is his choice, how much of a preference were you (inaudible)?
00:52 I want Coach to be happy. I want him to be excited about the job. I want him to believe he’s the right guy for the job. I want him to have an opportunity to, again, enjoy what he does, so whatever that means for him, everybody’s plan is their own and not gonna try to tell anybody what to do. He knows how I feel about him. That shouldn’t even need to be said, but however it goes, you’re excited about, or not excited, you’re thankful for what we’ve been able to accomplish over this run. I’m thankful for an opportunity, hopefully, to put it together, to do something again next year and, again, I just want Coach to be able to look at the situation as a whole and feel like he’s the right guy.
02:00 We asked Steve about that last moment with you, Draymond and him on the sideline, and he said this could be the last time. Did that hit you then, like, the last time you three are together in a competitive moment?
02:14 I mean, I was kind of fighting it, to be honest. You always have— we’ve lost games. You’ve ended your season in a lot of different ways and you’ve had those moments on the sideline where you go up and down and thank everybody for what they poured into the year, but for it to start with that conversation and that moment, it was definitely weird because we had spent the last, all season, but really the last two weeks trying to hone in on just the moment right now, that we had to extend our season and then all of a sudden you look up and time’s run out. And I do appreciate the fact that he took that moment because regardless, like, we’re human beings and we have to be able to acknowledge each other in that moment, but I don’t know if that’s a signal of anything. It’s just we wanted to appreciate what we’ve all poured into to this journey.
03:09 Given what you guys have been able to accomplish, how are you gonna remember the season, given all the ups and downs and everything
03:17 that happened?
03:18 It was a roller coaster ride, to say the least. The way we came in with the locker room that we had, we had our sights set on realistically trying to chase home court advantage, knowing where we were last year after the trade deadline with Jimmy. And then he goes down, Mo goes down, I miss 20-whatever games and you see, like, just momentum slipping away, but there was still this underlying belief that when it comes to the Warriors, you’re always talking about championships. That’s what we’ve established as a goal, but when we had to reshape that, it’s like, okay, can we just make something out of this year to get a playoff experience and playoff berth and that felt like the right goal and why I forced my way to try to get back. And for us to have that moment we did in LA, the highs of that and the lows of tonight, it’s just what basketball is, what sports is about. You never know what’s gonna happen, but you give it everything you have and for us to have had these last three, four days and the whole Play-in situation, I’m proud of the way we finished it because it could have been very sleepy, like, I not come back and we get blown out in the first game and everybody kind of just goes into the summer with no real direction. It was a fun ride these last four days,
04:53 How would you categorize kind of the state of the knee issue you’re dealing with? And do you think any, like, do you need anything done this summer or is it just— ?
05:02 It’s mostly rest. I mean, there are some things I can do to prepare myself for next year, which I’ll stay on top of. And they say a lot of golf helps my knee, I heard. That was part of the research I did. It was pretty incredible, so hopefully we can do that and then we come back next year and I think long, big picture, I don’t think there’s anything you have to be mindful of, what it showed, how it showed itself this year knowing there was a clear, like, how I prepared pre-injury and post-injury. So the things I’ve been doing recently, I’ll continue to do when it comes to rehab and maintenance and all that, but it is kind of touch and go just knowing, hopefully, rest will get me right, go into to training camp feeling good and be able to manage it early in the year and kind of see where I’m at. That’s kind of the idea, but I don’t feel like there’s gonna be any real long term symptoms or anything.
06:06 You’re still seeing multiple years and beyond for the rest of your career?
06:12 Multiple, for sure. There’s more than one? Yes. That’s perfect. Perfect.
06:16 Would you be interested in an
06:20 extension?
06:21 For sure, but none of those conversations have happened, so it’ll be a busy summer for the Warriors.
06:28 Steph, to follow up on what you were saying earlier, the goal obviously here has always been the title and you guys were consistent from the start of the year that, if everybody was healthy, you felt like you could take some swings and get there. As you see what happened this year, the uncertainty about the summer, do you walk into next year feeling like if you get everybody back healthy with the group that you do have, that you can still at least push for that level?
06:56 Yeah, but I think we can approach it differently in the way that we build the year because we started the year with that as an aspiration. I’ve only been in one locker room for the last 17 years. Before you win the title, there was only like those first two years, like, you’re building the foundation for what a championship team looks like, even though you had no idea what that really meant. Then you accomplish it and then everything else is based off of that. And it’s been that way for, since 2015, so I think we can reshape the narrative, like, knowing the back of our mind, like, that is the ultimate goal, but we have to get back to the basics of what makes a good basketball team a competitive basketball team every single night. Understand how, realize how hard it is to win in this league, but can we rethink how we do things with the foundation that we’ve established? We don’t have to keep saying, “Championship, championship championship,” every day, even though we’ve experienced that. It’s, can we just build a foundation again with what this team needs to do, with the way that the game is played now, how fast it is, how young and athletic it is, all of those things? We have to kind of put everything on the drawing board to get back to just being competitive every single night.
08:14 Steph, Steve said, the words he used were, “Every coach has an expiration date.” He certainly —
08:20 Was he in here like going crazy? Like, y’all giving me some lines. I’ve only had one conversation with him, so I didn’t get the— I’m learning on the fly, so please, sorry.
08:29 Take a week or two.
08:30 Continue.
08:32 But my question is— ?
08:33 Huh?
08:35 He certainly seems as engaged as ever in his 12th season.
08:38 Yeah.
08:40 And how do you view, sort of, is he still the right coach for where you guys are and do you agree with it, “Every coach has an expiration date,” or can it go longer?
08:52 I think everything we’ve done is unprecedented and there’s only a few examples you can kind of look to in the history of basketball, especially in the modern era where, when we started, again, the way the game is played has changed from 2013-14 when we were kind of ascending to, or ‘14-15 when coach got here, where we were ascending to how it’s played now, roster construction, like, all those things. You have to adapt and evolve, for sure. I think Coach is fully capable of doing that and thinking outside the box as we go, but to his point, and your spirit has to be in it, your mind has to be in it. Your coaching staff, like, every dynamic has to be on that journey with you, so only he can answer that and it sounds like he’s put a lot of thought into it, but we’ll have those conversations where I get to kind of understand where his mindset is because it’s not like he was going to open up to me on that front, over the last, or at any point during the season because we still had a job to do.
09:59 Going back to the Suns, basically KD was here last year. He’s no longer here. A lot of people thought the Suns wouldn’t be doing this well this year. What do you see on the court from them this season, in particular this Play-in game, that kind of just changed their mentality? It just looks like they got better this year without Kevin.
10:17 They got better and they look different and they figured out how to put the pieces together to highlight what they could do, what their strengths are, what this particular group is. They’re super talented, fast, athletic defensively. They like to switch a lot and you got Devin doing his thing as a playmaker and a scorer. I heard Draymond talk about what Dillon’s brought, in terms of just the mentality, but you have a lot of, we call them the others, but a lot of guys who show up on a nightly basis. You know what Jordan Goodwin did tonight was incredible. Ighodaro stepping in and starting, rolling, you had— what’s his name?— Williams out, so like, they do it— they seem to do it by a committee, but they all play hard every night and you’re gonna be in a track meet and that’s what it felt like tonight, so they did what they had to do. It’ll be fun to watch them against OKC. I’m sure they’re pretty confident they can go out and challenge the champs.
11:28 Sam (Gordon), Sam you had a question, right?
11:30 Yeah, just going back to Steve for a second, did this season feel different for you guys knowing that he didn’t have a contract?
11:36 Nah, it was more the injuries and the change of who we had available on a nightly basis, halfway through the year. That was more the concern and the challenge that we had to face. I think he did a great job of not letting that be too much of a talking point within our circles, which that’s what a professional does.
12:02 Did Steve literally say on the sideline there that this could be the last time?
12:06 He said, yeah, it’s— “I don’t know what’s gonna happen, but if it is the last time, I just wanna share this moment,” which to the point of, like, after laying it all out in the line for as long as we did during this game, that was kind of a jolt of a message, but he left the door open.
12:24 Great.
12:24 Alright, last one.
12:26 So, the Suns had to take a step back last off-season in order to take a step forward. And the Warriors, five years ago, had to do the same thing. Been playing and then got bounced out by the Lakers. Then you had to take that leap forward, of course, to win the championship. Do you see similar or different scenarios in that way in which the Warriors had to take that step back, just like the Suns took a step back, knowing you did that before?
12:54 Yeah, I think when you’re at the bottom or you underperform based on your expectations, like, again, that’s where we are right now. You have to assess where you’re at and put your best foot forward to put a team together that can be competitive. They have more games ahead of them, so they’re still writing their story and however it turns out, I’m sure they’re gonna be proud of what they’ve accomplished this year, but there’s 30 teams out there that are trying to do the exact same thing every year and it’s a super-competitive league and you have to hold on to whatever momentum you have when you get it, so they’re on that ride and we’ll see how it goes.
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