Warriors' Situation May Be Too Perfect for Luke Walton to Leave It Behind
OAKLAND, Calif. — Golden State Warriors assistant coach Luke Walton will have a shot at a head coaching gig as soon as this summer, but one of the NBA's hottest prospective properties may not be so quick to chase big cash and bigger opportunity.
Walton was smiling Thursday, dapping up Draymond Green on the practice court and chuckling as player development coach Theo Robertson hit the deck to do pushups as penance for losing some undefined post-shootaround contest. Though he always appeared at ease during a 39-4 fill-in stint for Steve Kerr (the Warriors don't call him Cool Hand Luke for nothing), Walton looks particularly placid in his familiar, albeit diminished, assistant's role.
You watch how he relates to players, you see the smiles...and you wonder why Walton would consider changing anything.
"All of us are driven, all of us are ambitious," Warriors assistant coach Jarron Collins told Bleacher Report. "We’re human beings. Individual opportunities are going to come, but what we have here is special. And all of us recognize that."
The Price of Winning
Success like the Warriors' comes at a cost.
Former lead assistant Alvin Gentry was a prime target last offseason, sought after by plenty of franchises hoping to chip off a piece of what the Warriors had. He ended up with the New Orleans Pelicans and quickly proved it's not so easy to graft the Dubs' mystique onto a foreign host.
Despite struggles of some, top assistants on winning teams routinely get scooped up. Run down the candidates for Coach of the Year—Steve Clifford, Terry Stotts, Rick Carlisle—and you see former assistants who worked their way into the big chair of a different organization than the one they started with.
Franchises in need of a fresh beginning will line up to woo Walton. And they should. He had the rare chance at an on-the-fly audition, and he nailed it.
"With me missing the first half of the season, everybody had to step into different roles and assume different responsibilities," Kerr said. "Luke gets all the credit and he deserves a ton of it. He was phenomenal."
But back up a second. Why does any of this really matter? It’s just coach stuff. We like to think the players on the floor determine a team’s success. Kerr says so himself all the time.
The difference with the Warriors is this: The coaching staff occupies a unique position as both paragons of and salesmen for Golden State’s collaborative, team-first culture. Collins talks about the brotherhood you typically find in a locker room extending to the coach's room.
"A big reason we have for the chemistry on the team is the chemistry we have within our staff," Kerr said.
"We know what we have going on here is pretty darn special. I don’t think any of us are in a hurry to try to get out of here," Walton told SFGate.com's Rusty Simmons about a month ago.
So while it’s true a great deal of the Warriors’ success—perhaps almost all of it—stems from great talent on the court, the organizing principles behind that talent, the modes of thinking that channel individual good into collective great, are embodied by the staff.
Oh, and that staff knows Walton will have options.
"I think he will be successful no matter what happens," Collins explained. "I gotta say, and I just want to be clear, I’m not pushing him out. We want him."
Walton should want the Warriors, too.
More Kindred Spirit Than Clone
Maybe we're getting ahead of ourselves. Maybe teams with coaching vacancies will see Walton's 39-4 record and conclude he was merely voicing Kerr's instructions, implementing Kerr's plans.
They'll only be half right.
Kerr was involved behind the scenes during his absence, and to some, that might diminish what Walton accomplished. Instead, it’s a compliment—particularly because Walton wasn’t emulating Kerr; he was conveying the same effective message that got the Warriors to the top of the heap last year. And he did it without falling into the trap of impersonating Kerr. He did it because he thought (and thinks) the same way Kerr did.
"Luke is always going to be true to himself," Collins observed.
Walton recognized good ideas and good practices when he saw them, and he implemented them as a head coach because he believed in them.
And at some point, it just becomes a rhetorical question: How could it be a bad thing if Walton’s style as a coach resembled that of Kerr, who won 67 games in his first season on the bench?
And unless you're persuaded that Walton's inexperience will turn teams off, it's difficult to be skeptical about the interest he'll draw or the success he'll have.
Take the half-season stewardship this year, toss in a lifetime of NBA lessons from great minds—“he’s been around basketball since he was in diapers,” Collins said—and calling Walton green feels foolish. He grew up with his father, Bill Walton, sticking motivational quotes from John Wooden in his lunchbox. He played for Lute Olson and Phil Jackson, winning titles and working with superstars.
He lacks experience with failure, but that’s about it. And that's hardly a knock.
The Greenest Grass
Given Walton's undeniable appeal as a head coach, and the broader trend of opportunistic organizations snatching guys like him up, there's little question the offers will flood in. And if the past is any guide, those entreaties will be hard to ignore.
But in light of the Warriors' uncommonly harmonious atmosphere (and all that winning), might there be more hesitation to bolt than usual? There should be, according to Luke's father.
"I want what’s best for Luke Walton," Bill Walton told ESPN's First Take on March 23. "I'm a warrior of the Golden State. It doesn’t get any better than what he’s got right now ever in life, and money will not make that happen again. It’s there now. Head coaching jobs, they’re open for a reason, and what he’s got, just stay there."
And given all that, might Walton or any other Warriors assistant more closely scrutinize other opportunities, no matter how enticing they might appear?
"I think you have to. You really do," Collins said. "Obviously, you realize how special it is to be around this group, this organization. We have fun, we do things the right way, we're competitive as all heck. It really is a special environment to be around."
Who could fault Walton for sticking around and smiling a while longer?
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All quotes obtained firsthand unless otherwise noted.
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