OAKLAND — After winning his first NBA championship as Warriors head coach in the 2015-16 season, Steve Kerr labeled himself as the “luckiest guy on Earth” for landing in such a promising situation. One season earlier, he had inherited a roster filled with some of the NBA’s brightest and budding stars, headlined by Steph Curry.
Now in his fourth year as head coach, with two championships to his name, Kerr has had time to reflect on his point guard’s rise to superstardom.
“The player, I felt like when I got here, he was already on his way,” Kerr said on Thursday evening, fewer than two hours before the Warriors hosted the San Antonio Spurs. “He had turned into a star. He had become an All Star the previous year, and you could see the confidence that he already had. I think it was a matter of right when he was coming into his own, and it was a great sequence of events for him and for us, to have these great teammates around him.”
Under Kerr, Curry worked harmoniously with Klay Thompson, who made his first All Star appearance in 2014-15. Kerr deployed Draymond Green more regularly in the rotation and watched the records fall.
Curry went on to win consecutive MVPs in the following seasons and became the NBA’s only unanimous MVP during his 2015-16 campaign. When the Warriors won a record 73 games, Kerr credited Curry’s counterparts for those honors.
“The emergence of Draymond helped Steph for sure,” Kerr said. “They all of the sudden developed this great pick-and-roll combination. Klay’s presence has done so much for Steph. These last couple years KD. It’s much easier to be a great player when you got great teammates. The game becomes a lot easier and simpler. I think it was just a really good bit of timing. Steph was going to be a star no matter what, but he had a lot of other guys around who him were becoming stars, and they have really worked well together.”