Steve Kerr's Undeniable Case for 2015 NBA Coach of the Year
Stephen Curry might win the MVP, Draymond Green has a strong case for the Defensive Player of the Year Award, and either Andre Iguodala or Marreese Speights could take home some sixth-man hardware without surprising anyone.
But Steve Kerr is the Golden State Warriors' most award-worthy figure.
The first-year head coach has piloted the Dubs to heights never before seen, and he's done it by leveraging his skills as a strategist, salesman and shrink.
His process this season has been impeccable, but the NBA is a results-driven enterprise. So we'll start there.
A Golden Year
Kerr's Warriors have ground opponents into dust this season by posting the top offensive and defensive ratings in the league, per NBA.com. That's a rare double dip not seen since the 1995-96 Chicago Bulls pulled it off.
No team since the 1996-97 Bulls has posted a higher per-game point differential than the Warriors' plus-10.7, which would rank sixth in league history if it holds up.
Golden State also leads the NBA in field-goal percentage and field-goal percentage defense, something that hasn't happened in 35 years, according to ESPN.com's Marc Stein. Oh, and the Warriors have done all that while playing at the league's fastest pace.
Put simply, the Warriors are across-the-board dominant, a juggernaut nobody can stop that also stops everybody. At this point, the only thing keeping us from getting a look at Kerr's skills as a play-caller is the fact that the Warriors generally hold a giant lead on opponents, as John Shea of the San Francisco Chronicle quipped:
Sure you can also credit his assistants Ron Adams and Alvin Gentry, but be sure to acknowledge that Kerr is the principal difference between this Warriors masterpiece and the paint-by-numbers outfit we saw last season.
The Process
Kerr probably could have gotten off the plane in Oakland in late October, taken a cab to Oracle Arena, rolled the ball out and watched the Warriors win another 50 games this year.
But he didn't. He showed up with reams of plans, PowerPoint presentations and video logs brimming with ideas, according to a profile by Chris Ballard of Sports Illustrated.
Kerr came prepared.
It's telling that his most frequently used starting lineup (Curry, Klay Thompson, Harrison Barnes, Green and Andrew Bogut), which has posted a ridiculous plus-18.7 net rating in over 700 minutes this season, didn't play a single second together last year.
Kerr never just leaned on talent; he organized it, gave it purpose and direction. The Warriors have passed the ball nearly 70 more times per game this year than last, when they ranked 30th in that category.
With the help of lead assistant Gentry, Kerr got the Dubs moving all over the floor—cutting, flaring, diving, literally sprinting in circles around Bogut sometimes. The isolation sets and low-efficiency post-ups of 2013-14 are gone.
Critically, as Curry noted, according to Ballard, Kerr didn't "try to come in and be the hero and reinvent the wheel when it came to what we were good at."
All he did was inflate the tire, disengage the parking brake and overhaul the suspension.
If you're making the case for Atlanta Hawks head coach Mike Budenholzer, this is where you start: Kerr had the talent on hand when he took the job, and all he did was make some tweaks.
Remember, though: Budenholzer has now had the benefit of multiple offseasons to hone his system. Kerr had one.
Budenholzer got Al Horford, an All-Star, back from injury. Kerr sent two All-Stars to the bench, shuffling David Lee and Andre Iguodala into reserve roles with the former now almost completely out of the rotation.
You can't discount the individual work put in by resurgent starters Green and Barnes, but the fact remains that Kerr trusted them to take on bigger roles and, more importantly, came in with a scheme that set them up to succeed.
And the overarching achievement here, the real clincher in Kerr's coach-of-the-year case, is that he got wholesale buy-ins from a roster that, in large part, didn't want him there in the first place.
It's a mistake to think Kerr has had it easy because of his team's talent.
He's only made it look that way.
Degree of Difficulty
Kerr replaced Mark Jackson, a coach who endeared himself to much of the roster in his three years in charge. Curry, most notably, spoke out against Jackson's firing.
Forget implementing offense and defense; Kerr had to win hearts and minds. And he did.
"I think he was destined to be a coach," Thompson told Ballard. "Just the way he's composed. He's got a real good way of dealing with people."
Kerr reached out to everyone personally, spending time with Curry, pumping up the deflated Barnes and even flying to Australia just to meet and speak with Bogut. We tend to underrate the non-strategic elements of coaching, but it's foolish to forget how important (and difficult) it can be for a coach to earn his players' trust and respect.
Kerr deserves loads of credit for succeeding in that aspect, particularly given the difficult circumstances with which he started.
And if we step back from the psychological struggles he faced, we must also note the objective difficulties Kerr has bested in this year's absurdly, comically, unfairly competitive Western Conference. As impressive as the Hawks have been under Budenholzer, they still play in a conference that might send as many as three sub-.500 teams to the playoffs.
Life in the West is infinitely tougher, and Kerr's Warriors have still blown the competition away more thoroughly than Budenholzer's Hawks have.
Golden State is a high-character, tied-together title favorite that plays better than anyone else on both ends, and if it weren't for Kerr's interpersonal and strategic skills, that likely wouldn't be the case.
Plenty of coaches have done a good job this year.
Kerr's done the best.
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