Stephen Curry and Draymond Green will pave way for young Warriors players, says Steve Kerr
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Sunday 27 October 2019 12:33, UK
Stephen Curry and Draymond Green will "pave the way" for their young team-mates to learn the Warriors' way, says Golden State head coach Steve Kerr.
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Is there a certain excitement this season? Is there a certain challenge that maybe hasn't been there for the last couple of years? Just on a personal level from a coaching standpoint, how are you approaching this year?
SK: I'm excited about it. It's a very different season. Every year is a different challenge, and the circumstances are unique. This is such a dramatic change from where we've been over the last four years that I think it allows for more change, more internal evaluation, what can we do better?
You know, the new building is almost a metaphor for how we can approach the season. We've got a chance to reset some things, anything we feel like could improve our team. It's a great opportunity to start fresh on some things.
And yet, we'll rely heavily on our veteran players, Stephen [Curry] and Draymond [Green] and [Kevon] Looney, Klay [Thompson], to kind of pave the way for the younger players. We want to maintain the culture that we've built, but we want to make sure our players are put in the best position to succeed, and the last four years we pretty much knew exactly what that meant. We don't really know what it means this year.
This is an entirely new group, and so we're trying to figure out who we are, what we are, and I will for sure monitor Steph and Draymond and Looney, the guys who played heavy minutes last year, so I'm not going to overwork them.
On the other hand, we have a lot of work to do with the group itself, as I've mentioned several times. So there should be plenty of intensity, plenty of motivation. We've got jobs on the line. We've got playing time at stake.
We've got so much up in the air and there's great opportunity for a lot of players to grab it, and you can only do that by competing.
How different will you be defensively, and how good are you going to be defensively this season?
SK: We have to figure out exactly what we're going to do. When I arrived five years ago, the defense was already built. It was already a top-five defense in the league. We tweaked a few things, but mainly kept the same style, and then Draymond emerged, and we started doing more switching. We could just plug and play.
This is different. When you look at the number of wing defenders we've lost, between Klay, Andre [Iguodala], Kevin [Durant], Shaun [Livingston], it's most of our wing defensive core. It's just a dramatically different roster. So we have to take that into account, and my guess is we're going to experiment with a lot of different coverages and schemes, and that it will look different.
I don't think we can just play the way we've played because we don't have the personnel to do so. We've got to be imaginative and we can't be afraid to try some new things, but how good can we be? We'll see.
How tough is it to replace Klay defensively?
SK: I think that's the challenge for the team this year, our defensive performance. Not just Klay, it's the rest of the guys we lost. The good news is that Klay will be back and when he's back, we'll be that much better. But in the meantime, we're trying to develop a young team and help them grow, and they're doing a great job.
Our young guys, where they are now compared to three weeks ago, it's a dramatic improvement. They're coming in here every day working before practice, staying after practice, and our older guys are doing a great job leading.
Draymond and Steph are doing more teaching than they've ever done before in practice. So it's a really healthy process and I think our fans are going to enjoy watching these young guys and watching our team develop over the course of the year. I think our fans will embrace it because they'll see the progress these guys are making.
Do you need Draymond to score more for you this year?
SK: Not necessarily. Draymond just has to be himself. We've got guys who can score. He doesn't need to try to be somebody he's not. He just needs to play his own game. But it will be different for him and for everybody because of the changes on the roster. So he's just got to feel his team-mates and the circumstances and see where he's got his opportunities. But he's one of the smartest players I've ever been around, so he'll figure it out.
Given the talent and experience Steph and Draymond have together, what do you expect they can do to help transition everything both on the court and behind the scenes this year?
SK: We'll rely on those guys along with Looney and Klay at some point, just to try to teach everybody, all the new people here what we're about.
Not only plays and schemes and that kind of stuff, but just our culture and our feel. So those two, in particular, Steph and Draymond, will play a huge role early on in the season as we're trying to establish kind of a sense of who we are.
You guys play the first primetime game in Europe on Sunday. How important do you think it is for the game to continue to grow in Europe and globally?
SK: It's a big part of the NBA brand. It's a big part of FIBA. We want the game to be played all over the world and we want fans to be interested. So I think it's a good idea to have some games that are shown primetime there. I think it's great.
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