The Real Fight That is Keeping the Warriors Sharp
10 games into the playoffs and the Golden State Warriors have not yet been forced to go to bed with a loss on their conscious. Adversity on the court has been fleeting, and so sparse in its occurrence that is has become very difficult, as a fan specifically, to remember what a real challenge feels like. Game 1 felt like it was shaping up to be their first gut punch of the playoffs. It seemed as though the Warriors were going to bed humbled, and forced to wake up remembering how to fight. Mid way through the third quarter of Game 1 the Warriors found themselves at the bottom of a canyon looking up at a 23 point deficit.
One controversial closeout on a Kawhi corner three later, and the prospect of a legendary and highly awaited Western Conference Finals began to wash away as the Warriors began a torrential down pour of made buckets. The Spurs tried to plug the boat in the fourth quarter, but to no avail. Without their transcendent star to man the ship, the Warriors kept bashing the hull of their sturdy and time tested team with rouge wave after rouge wave of awe inspiring play. Steph Curry was like a hurricane, and Kevin Durant was like mile long waterspout sucking the last of the fight right out of the Spurs. It was incredible, that cannot be disputed, but it didn’t feel magical.
It felt like watching a boxing match where midway through the fight the underdog is beating the champion senseless, and then out of nowhere just up and loses his right arm. No matter how solid of a strategy they had, without the weapon that makes them capable of executing the strategy, their only hope of victory was avoiding haymakers. That didn’t happen.
Game 2 rolled through and it was a wire to wire win of downright epic proportions. The Spurs fell to the hand of the Warriors harder than any of their previous two playoff opponents. It was such an unrelenting onslaught of scoring and defense, that for the first time ever in a Warriors playoff game, I fell asleep. I made it to the middle of the fourth quarter, but I became numb as the drubbing continued. There were certainly things that made the game exciting, such as Pat McCaw looking playoff ready, and Steph Curry continuing right where he left off in Game 1. Ultimately though, it felt like a game in mid-January against a vastly inferior opponent. By the time I dozed off, the game had been long in the bag, and it seemed as though the series might be too.
Once again it appears as the Warriors will dodge significant adversity on the court if this continues through the remainder of the Western Conference Finals, and this poses one major concern. If the Warriors aren’t challenged, could they get bored? Where do they get their motivation from if they come to realize they don’t need a lot of it to beat the Spurs? That answer is simple.
Coach Steve Kerr
Mike Brown has done an admirable job stepping into the role of HC for this team. He has done some things to massage the nuances that allow the Warriors to remain dynamic, which cannot be disputed. Yet, when the team was down against the galvanized Spurs, the Warriors needed more. Luckily for them, the more they needed came in the form of the toughest Warrior on the team. The tried and true head Coach. Steve Kerr’s very presence played into one of the strongest pieces of intrinsic motivation that drives this team. The seemingly immovable family first/support your own nature of this team. This is generally cultivated through the very culture of sports, but the emphasis on that is solidified and broadened by the excellent leadership and the wisdom of the compassionate and emotionally invested coaching staff, of which Steve Kerr is the architect.
Nobody deserves to be in pain, and wishing pain upon another living creature is cruel at its very core. The amount of pain that Kerr has experienced can only be explained by him. I will not write a pretty and flowery description of this pain. I don’t need to. He not being on the bench coaching his men in a Western Conference Finals game is more than sufficient. Steve Kerr has not been away from basketball since the day he picked one up. It makes up most of his life. It is his legacy.
After leaving the bench in the first round, Kerr’s absence has been felt. Not on a score board necessarily, but in the sense that team has always been a sum of all of its parts, and the engineer that maximizes the effectiveness all of the parts is not there to make sure everything is operating in unison. Instead he is forced to step aside and fight for the single most importing thing one requires to make the most of their time on Earth. Quality of life. The vigor and determination Kerr is demonstrating while pursuing such an arduous battle headlong is not lost on the team.
One brief "Kerr-like" speech and the Warriors opened the second half of Game 1 back in tune with who they are. Had things gone differently for the Spurs, the Warriors would have likely still lost Game 1, but they would have gone down swinging and back to playing the right way. Despite the win or the possible loss, what really mattered was the very presence of their leader not letting his own unimaginable struggle keep him away from them. The words coming from him to them while standing in front of, not hiding behind, his greatest fight was like mainlining every bit of motivation the universe has to offer right into the heart. The effects of that talk, and his increased presence around the team carried over into Game 2 brilliantly. The team didn’t need to experience adversity on a court for motivation. They just needed a reminder from their leader that no battle is too big not to win.
Kerr plans to join the team on the road as they hope to continue their dominating playoff run. For the first time since his procedure earlier this month there is finally a spark of hope that Kerr may be winning his fight. With fingers crossed we applaud him, and so does his team.