Fake Kerr Mailbag #3. 90’s Bulls v GSW, Draymond explosions

We are lucky enough today to have a transcript of a (fake) conversation with Warriors head coach Steve Kerr, and assistant coaches Ron Adams and Mike Brown. This really happened and in no way was completely made up.

Q1 is from Greg Thomas. If your Bulls teams of the late 90s played the current Warriors squad and you had to coach against that Bulls team, how would you exploit certain matchups?

Steve Kerr: People are always fascinated with comparing our team to the 1996 Chicago Bulls.

Ron Adams: It’s a natural part of humans grappling with inevitable death.

Kerr: You know I could give you tactics, like we’re gonna pick on Toni Kukoc in the pick and roll, make him move. We’re gonna switch screens and overplay the weakside of the triangle to force them away from that two-man game with Michael Jordan in the post. We’re gonna give up the long 2, modern style, and beat them with 3s. We’re gonna make Michael and Scottie Pippen run through a dozen screens to wear them out. We’re gonna prod and bait Dennis Rodman into silly fouls and invite him to big parties before the game. We’re gonna get little Steve Kerr on the block and post him into a pancake.

But it’s really complicated when you think about it. Do we play by 1996 rules with the hand checks and no zone defense, or 2017 rules? And here’s another thing, are we talking about the perfect, healthy, gelled version of each team? People don’t remember but my three-peat Bulls, we were banged up and injured. Scottie had a back problem, Toni Kukoc had a foot thing. Michael was still a force of nature, but he was getting slower. And Dennis had his self-destructive partying.

Adams: The ancient Greek philosopher Heraclitus observed you can’t step into the same river twice. Teams change day by day as we coaches push them to be their best version of themselves. Are we comparing the absolute best of teams? No, we’re comparing what we imagine about today to what we glamorize in our memory. Humans always think the past is better because we know more or less how things turn out. Nostalgia is a way of grappling with the uncertainty of the future, and everyone’s eventual demise.

Mike Brown: Hey everybody! Why the long face, Ronnie? Someone mess up a switch? Ha ha. I’m just kidding.

Kerr: We’re talking about the usual Chicago Bulls question.

Brown: Oh, you mean why those idiots fired Ronnie?

Kerr: No, the—

Brown: Ronnie, you got a raw deal. A raw deal. But as they say, one man’s raw meat is another man’s rare hamburger, am I right?

Adams: It was a painful episode, but I have had wonderful jobs since then.

Brown: You know what’s funny? Okay, get this. So Ronnie here got fired a few years ago for calling the Bulls management a bunch of idiots. You know what the last straw was? Ronnie here and Tom Thibodeau were desperate to draft someone in the second round, right? They love this guy. But management thinks he’s a chubby tweener, so — VETO — they draft someone completely different. Some people ask Ronnie about the situation later, and I’m sure he was very diplomatic and intellectual, right? Like he quoted some Greek philosopher or something, but he basically tells people that management doesn’t know its head from its rear, right? So, BAM. They fire him. Thibs goes nuts, and he fights with his bosses until he gets dumped too. So... the name of that draft pick that blew up the Chicago Bulls, the one that got away? Do you know? It was... Draymond Green. Hah! Isn’t that fate for you? Draymond and Ronnie together at last.

Q2. Could you describe your relationships with Draymond?

Brown: Oh man, Dray is a hoot. I mean he and I will chop it up, we can talk Xs and Os all day.

Kerr: We have a great relationship. I admire him so much as a man, basketball mind and player. He’s like a coach on the floor. The main challenge with him is that he needs to play with an edge, but not go over the edge. And as the coach, sometimes I get cut open with the edge. But it’s okay, I’ve got a temper myself, so we’ll just curse each other out and bad feelings don’t linger.

Brown: Hug it out, baby! Hug it out!

Adams: The automobile’s internal combustion engine works on the same principle. There are violent gas explosions every second, but they happen in just the right rhythm and system so you get productive force.

Brown: Hey speaking of gas explosions, let’s go get some Mexican food. I’m starving. Let this poor intern do his work.

I’m not an int— never mind. Thank you all for talking today.

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