Golden State Warriors coach Steve Kerr spoke on how coaching Stephen Curry forced him to retrain the way he thought about basketball.
When Stephen Curry went toe-to-toe with Atlanta Hawks’ Trae Young, Curry felt he had something to prove against the point guard one decade his junior.
While the two kept it close during the first half, with Curry scoring 24 and Young scoring 21, only one of the elite guards exploded in the second. Curry went on to score 50 total points, leaving Young with 28 and well behind him in any one-to-one comparison.
Fans have an easy time watching Curry go off, but for Warriors head coach Steve Kerr, it was quite the adjustment to trust Curry to do his thing and ball out. During his weekly radio appearance on 95.7 The Game’s “Damon & Ratto”, the legendary point guard-turned-coach explained how Curry’s shots would have made Kerr’s former coaches have a heart attack.
“I had to get over what was instilled in my brain about what was a good shot and what was a bad shot,” Kerr explained. “With Steph, you have to understand, part of what makes him so powerful is that he’s going to steal the ball at midcourt and pull up from 40 feet.”
“As a coach, you have to allow that to happen,” Kerr continued. “You can’t get in the way.”
Warriors coach Steve Kerr explains how Steph Curry forced him to trust his game
Kerr speaks from his own experience as a point guard, where he spent 16 years building one of the most impressive résumes in NBA history. Kerr has won five NBA Championships as a player and three as coach of the Warriors, and he is the only player in NBA history to win four straight titles after 1969.
But Steph knows a thing or two about winning as well. Drafted by the Warriors in 2009, Curry was integral in building a Warriors dynasty that lasted from 2014 to 2019 and resulted in three NBA Championships. So was Kerr, of course, who joined the team in 2014 and has led his players to the 9-1 record that currently leads the Western Conference.
Even though Kerr may have initially had trouble trusting Curry to shoot from halfcourt, Curry’s numbers prove that he can make the most unbelievable shots. In fact, Curry is coming for Kerr’s 3-point percentage record.
Kerr is the all-time 3-point percentage leader with 45.4 percent, and Curry is currently seventh with 43.21 percent. While the spots are far apart, the percentage gap is something Curry could close with a couple more good seasons, something that would have to be bittersweet for Kerr.