Warriors' Historic Start Shows It's Talent, Not Coaching, That Counts Most
With all due respect to the formidable future Luke Walton has in his profession, this perfect Golden State Warriors start just goes to show how little coaching actually matters.
Quality players in healthy states of mind and body dictate the results of the NBA, bottom line, regardless of how everyone stresses over every little decision the coaches make.
We tend to think of the head coach as the leader of a team by default.
Rarely is that true.
He sets the agenda. He makes decisions on timeout calls and bench substitutions. He most definitely has a heavy burden because there are so many details to address.
But the thing is, however well or poorly those details are tended to is secondary.
With the exception of Gregg Popovich, you can take the head coaches of all the NBA's contenders—David Blatt, Fred Hoiberg, Billy Donovan, Doc Rivers and Steve Kerr—shuffle them up and deal them out to different teams, and the results would not be dramatically different.
Yes, that statement rightly includes Kerr, as sharp as he is and as successful as he was last season in taking over the Warriors.
He missed training camp and has only been around behind the scenes occasionally this season, and his team is 16-0 after beating the Lakers on Tuesday. That's the best start ever in NBA history! So you tell me just how critical it is to have the guy around.
We in the media only fuel the misunderstanding by propping coaches up as spokesmen and second-guessing so many of their decisions. Owners and general managers fall into the trap, too.
But changing coaches is mostly a cosmetic way of getting the attention of players who make a difference and potentially tweaking their behavior—as the struggling Houston Rockets are trying to do now by firing Kevin McHale less than a year after extending his contract.
Of course, coaching is useful…and it is in most aspects of life, honestly. Kerr certainly managed personalities and tweaked game strategy to make the Warriors better than they would've been had Mark Jackson been retained last season.
But now that Kerr is on the mend from offseason back surgery and his return appears to be coming sooner rather than later, he will have his work cut out for him as the Warriors' championship momentum gives way to the grind of a long season and individual egos seek out attention.
But this crew has been a machine this season despite the fact Walton has needed some time to learn how to draw up a good quick inbounds play or let go of his security blanket of playing an injury-prone Andre Iguodala so much.
In some ways, this team was already a machine last season. Walton was reminded of that when he was holed up in the coach's office at Staples Center before that thrilling victory over the Clippers last Thursday and heard laughter all through the locker room outside.
The same thing happened before a critical NBA Finals game in Cleveland last June, prompting an antsy Kerr to look at the nervous coaching staff in his office and say, "I think we're going to be OK."
Kerr's heaviest lifting is done, and he has the kind of strong-minded, determined players who can occasionally help the coach relax, instead of vice versa. That's also a reminder that the front office's work is fundamentally more important than the coaching staff's, because the right players are the most important ingredient in success.
Since Joe Lacob and Peter Guber bought the Warriors in 2010, they've raised the bar in all areas of the organization, especially the front office, now led by Bob Myers. On a day-to-day basis this season, Walton has been able to rest assured that the Warriors have top people in organizational support structures to help him get the job done, too.
Ultimately, though, these Warriors players know what's up. It'll be on them, even when Kerr returns, to focus on their purposes again late in the season and rediscover what they've got going now.
Meanwhile, their old buddy, likable Alvin Gentry, is off to one of the NBA's worst starts as the new head coach of the New Orleans Pelicans.
Now, Gentry has not been a particularly great head coach—we've come to that conclusion from his thick body of mediocre work (a career 335-370 record before this season) in charge of the Pistons, Clippers and Suns—but if he had stayed on as the Warriors' associate head coach this season, is it in any less likely that Golden State would be undefeated at this point?
Despite consecutive victories to improve to 3-11, Gentry is struggling to implement his preferred system with a roster that flat-out cannot consistently execute it—a common pitfall among head coaches who overestimate how much this is about them.
Injuries haven't helped, but Gentry knew well in advance that Jrue Holiday would be limited with a leg injury through the early part of the season as the Pelicans shifted to this guard-driven style. More than anything else, the attention to defensive detail has been atrocious. The Pelicans rank 28th in opponents' field-goal shooting and dead last in the NBA in points allowed per game.
You could say that Gentry's outside-in offense has given guard Eric Gordon many more opportunities to show his improvement so far. But is this Gentry coming in and encouraging Gordon, or is some other core motivation at work here? Don't forget Gordon happens to be in a contract year, and all that salary-cap space throughout the NBA is coming up this summer.
Again, it's fundamentally about the players—precisely what Kerr said time and again last season when folks were singing his praises for Golden State's improvement. It was not false humility.
Would Phil Jackson at his best be perfect to show the 22-year-old Anthony Davis how to win? Sure. The maximum impact of a head coach comes when talented players are unaware of what they can do to be greater and are eager to find out.
However, a head coach can only do so much when Davis is still too young to be a true leader atop a thin depth chart.
Out of nine seasons (discounting three other years Gentry was fired during the season), only once did Gentry win a playoff series as an NBA head coach. And what was responsible for Gentry's success with the 2010 Western Conference finalist Phoenix Suns?
It was actually more about who was responsible—and it wasn't Gentry. Steve Nash was still near the peak of his powers and even more gifted at galvanizing his teammates than when he was in his physical prime.
Mike D'Antoni also found out how difficult life could be without Nash, never winning a single playoff series as an NBA head coach without the former two-time MVP on his roster.
So, as we see Walton's perfection here and Gentry and D'Antoni falling on their faces there, let's maintain some perspective.
Coaching performance is more effect than cause.
Stan Van Gundy, head coach and president of the Detroit Pistons, is a renowned X's-and-O's wizard. But this is what he said recently about the process of building a winner:
"The most important thing when you do this is to get the right people, both in the front office and in the locker room. You do that first and then you try to grow the talent without sacrificing the culture. I tell myself to be patient a lot, but myself doesn't always listen."
Van Gundy's Pistons proceeded to lose to the lowly Lakers that night, necessitating even more patience. Yet Van Gundy is smart enough to know that the bigger goal is acquiring talented players who uphold a winning culture without needing a coach to nag them about it.
That's what Walton is enjoying now.
As much as he deserves credit for the respect and rapport he has with this group of Warriors, the skill and conviction of this group is the envy of every single head coach in the league.
Kevin Ding is an NBA senior writer for Bleacher Report. Follow him on Twitter, @KevinDing.
