© Kyle Terada | 2017 Feb 1
Kevin Durant made some headlines (shocker) last week when he said this about Steve Kerr’s egalitarian, ball-movement centric offense in an interview with the Wall Street Journal:
“The motion offense we run in Golden State, it only works to a certain point,” Durant said. “We can totally rely on our system for maybe the first two rounds. Then the next two rounds we’re going to have to mix in individual play. We’ve got to throw teams off, because they’re smarter in that round of playoffs.
“So now I have to dive into my bag, deep, to create stuff on my own, off the dribble, isos, pick-and-rolls, more so than let the offense create points for me.”
Many took this quote as a not-so-vailed shot at Kerr, who Durant has been rumored to be not too fond of.
Kerr didn’t take it as such. In fact, he agrees.
“I wasn’t at all offended what Kevin said because it’s basically the truth,” Kerr told Anthony Slater of The Athletic in a wide-ranging conversation published Tuesday. “You look at any system, I mean, I played the triangle with Michael Jordan. The offense ran a lot smoother all regular season and the first couple rounds of the playoffs than it did in the conference finals and Finals. It just did.
“That’s why guys like Michael Jordan and Kevin Durant and Kobe Bryant are who they are. They can transcend any defense. But defenses in the playoffs, deep in the playoffs, combined with the physicality of the game — where refs can’t possibly call a foul every time — means that superstars have to take over. No system is just going to dice a Finals defense up. You have to rely on individual play. I didn’t look at (his comment) as offensive. I look at that as fact.”
Kerr’s analysis of how offenses must shift late in the postseason only further illuminates why the Warriors were so keen on acquiring Durant, arguably the best isolation player in the entire NBA, three offseasons ago.
But that wasn’t the only interesting thing Kerr had to say about Durant over the past few days. Kerr joined Howard Beck’s podcast and explained why he couldn’t have been less surprised that Durant decided to leave this offseason.
“One,” Kerr said when asked on a scale of 1 to 10, what his surprise level was when he heard Durant decided to join the Nets. “Not surprised.
“I don’t know. It just felt like it. I didn’t give it a whole lot of thought. This past year felt different. We kind of lost some momentum internally. It wasn’t anything tangible. People point to the Draymond-Kevin incident (in Los Angeles on Nov. 12). I honestly don’t think that was that big of a deal, as crazy as that sounds.
“For whatever reason, it just kind of ran its course. I don’t know why. I do think we’re in a different era where players are more interested by new challenges … players see that there’s a huge expanse out there; there’s this horizon with so many different opportunities. And so you’re just gonna have fewer teams that stick together for a long period of time.
“And that’s just kind of how it felt this year for us. This thing has a finite ending point and this is probably it.”
Warriors training camp begins next Tuesday.