Warriors coach Steve Kerr was sidelined due to COVID for the final three games of Golden State’s second-round matchup against the Memphis Grizzlies, but he’s back with the team and getting his squad ready for the Western Conference Finals.
Kerr joined 95.7 The Game’s “Damon & Ratto” for his weekly appearance Monday to discuss his positive test and preview the upcoming matchup against the Dallas Mavericks. Check out the full interview below:
“It was really tough,” Kerr said of testing positive for COVID before Game 4. “Especially in the middle of such a fight. It happened when we were up 2-1. Knowing how good Memphis is, knowing that we were gonna have to be on top of our game to beat them, then for it to happen literally two hours before the game – I was feeling some symptoms, I wasn’t feeling right and I knew I had to test, because if I had got the players sick that would have been a complete disaster. So to find out right before the game was gonna happen was bizarre. It all worked out. Ready to go for the next series.”
Now the Warriors are prepping for another NBA superstar. After overcoming two-time reigning MVP Nikola Jokic and the Denver Nuggets in the first round and playing against Ja Morant for three games while beating the Grizzlies, Golden State is focused on bottling up Dallas Mavericks front man Luka Doncic.
As Kerr noted, the Mavs like to slow the game down and let Luka work his magic in the halfcourt.
“It’s an adjustment that Jason Kidd made with the team this year when he took over,” Kerr told hosts Damon Bruce and Ray Ratto. “They slowed their pace down – I believe they were 30th in the league in pace. Luka is a very methodical player. (Dallas) does remind me of (James) Harden and the Houston teams from a few years ago that we used to face routinely in the playoffs: shooting in every spot, dominant 1-on-1 player maybe not the fastest tempo around. I think that they have found a really good sweet spot where they were able to improve their defense. Not only through schemes and individual versatility defensively, but by controlling the pace as well.”
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The Warriors, meanwhile, often find success while pushing their opponent in transition. Kerr admitted that it can be “difficult” to try and speed up an opposing team if they’re focused on clogging the game’s flow.
“Especially if they have a guy like Luka, that ball dominant and that much in control of the game,” Kerr said. “He doesn’t get rattled very easily. … However you wanna slice it, he’s amazing. He’s really, really something.”
In 10 games this postseason, Doncic is averaging 31.5 points, 10.1 rebounds and 6.6 assists per game.
Andrew Wiggins will likely get the lion’s share of minutes against Doncic to start, while other players like Klay Thompson, Jonathan Kuminga, Draymond Green and Otto Porter Jr. could find themselves locked up on Luka. The Warriors haven’t been afraid to employ box-and-one schemes to try and slow down Morant and Jokic this postseason.
“I think you gotta mix up coverages against him,” Kerr said. “He’s too good to just give the same look to over and over again. I wouldn’t rule out blitzing, that kinda stuff. There’s no one formula where you say, ‘Oh, ah-ha, we got it.’ This is a series where we’re gonna have to adapt and adjust game to game.”
Kerr clearly isn’t sleeping on the Mavericks after their surprise series victory over the No. 1 seed Phoenix Suns, who won 64 games in the regular season.
“Once you get past the first round, generally, you’ve got a bunch of teams that are good enough to win it all,” Kerr said.
