Golden State Warriors coach Steve Kerr invoked his former coach, Phil Jackson, when asked directly about complaints from the team’s fanbase that he doesn’t do enough to develop young players:
“Grown-ups win championships,” Kerr, who won five titles as a player with the Chicago Bulls and San Antonio Spurs, and has added four more as a coach with the Warriors, told Bay Area radio station 95.7 The Game Wednesday.
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Here are Kerr’s full comments on player development:
“Well it’s the role of the organization. And I think we’ve really addressed that over the last four or five years. We felt like there were some improvements we could make, and we changed some things organizationally, we brought in a couple of people to put them in charge of player development, and I think we’ve done a pretty good job of that over the last few years.
“I think part of the frustration of our fans probably stems from the fact that we have the three lottery picks coming at a time when we were winning a championship, and it’s just hard to play 19-year-olds on championship teams. The development that comes is going to be different than it would come on a team that’s in the lottery, where you just put a guy out there for 35 minutes and let him make his mistakes. I think that’s probably where some of the frustration comes. But you see how it can work, too. You see Moses Moody, you see his development over time, you see Gui Santos, I think Brandin [Podziemski] is really coming into his own and playing well. But it takes time.
“I remember when I got to Chicago, we had a couple of drafts and I was in my 10th year and I asked Phil Jackson what he thought of the guys we drafted, and he said, ‘Well, it won’t matter for a few years.’ And I said, ‘How come?’ And he said, ‘Grown ups win championships.’ And it’s true, it’s true. It’s really hard to come in as a young player and be expected to have the wealth of knowledge and skill and feel that you have to have to be a championship NBA player.
“I would equate it to just about anything else on Earth. Tell me the profession where the guy with the highest test scores at Stanford can go and be a CEO or be a partner in a firm or something. Life doesn’t work that way, and so when I think about any frustration from our fans, it’s probably just coming from this idea that young players should get it right away. It just doesn’t work that way.”
Kerr has long faced criticism for how he’s coached young players, but never more so than this season as the long-running Jonathan Kuminga saga came to a close. The former No. 7 overall pick got off to an excellent start, but was benched after 12 games and barely played after that point — a running theme throughout Kuminga’s time in the Bay Area.
“I do feel for him that he has been sort of at the whim of my decision-making,” Kerr said earlier this season.
At the deadline, the two parties got their much-needed break up. Kuminga was traded to the Atlanta Hawks along with Buddy Hield in exchange for Kristaps Porziņģis, as the Warriors brought in yet another veteran they hope can help them win now while Steph Curry and Draymond Green are still around.
Kuminga was not faultless during his time with the Warriors, but his departure was yet another reminder of how the organization squandered numerous lottery picks during Curry’s prime, and of their failed “two timelines” strategy.
As the result of two injury-riddled seasons and the Andrew Wiggins trade, the Warriors had three lottery picks in the span of two years: No. 2 overall in 2020 (James Wiseman), No. 7 overall in 2021 (Kuminga) and No. 14 overall in 2021 (Moses Moody). Moody is the only one who remains, and he’s a role player.
Since their 2022 title, the Warriors have drifted further and further from contention — they’re currently 31-30 and clinging to the No. 8 seed in the Western Conference — right as their early 2020s lottery picks should have been hitting their prime and helping carry Curry and Green into the twilight of their careers.
Kerr is correct that grown ups win championships, and he wasn’t the one who picked Wiseman over LaMelo Ball, or Kuminga over Franz Wagner, or Moody over Trey Murphy III. At the same time, it’s understandable that Warriors fans are frustrated by how few young players in Kerr’s tenure have grown up into adults capable of helping the team win.
