STEVE KERR BOARDED a red-eye flight back to the Bay Area on Dec. 25, 2016, and confronted what he now calls the biggest regret of his 11 years coaching Stephen Curry.
Business had ruined the Golden State Warriors‘ holiday. They had blown a 14-point fourth-quarter lead to the same Cleveland Cavaliers who had ripped their hearts out in Game 7 of the NBA Finals six months prior.
In the heated aftermath, Kerr voiced his frustration about the Warriors’ lack of ball security, specifically calling out his star point guard. Kerr said Curry “could be a little smarter.” It became a dominant postgame talking point. Kerr cracked open his computer, saw the headline and cringed.
“What am I doing?” Kerr remembered thinking in the darkness. “I immediately knew.”
Both the soundbite and the context behind it stung Curry. His behind-the-back turnover late in Game 7 had become a summer punchline — the trophy photoshopped over the basketball to signify him throwing the championship away.
This comment reopened a wound at a time when the Warriors, now the sport’s villains after signing Kevin Durant, were a public punching bag. It fueled the fire. Curry had friends and family text him with essentially the same message: “Why would he say that?”
“I do remember that episode,” Curry said nearly nine years later. “The forbidden sin of coaching — when you out players in the media.”
The plane landed and Kerr sent Curry a text. He asked if he could stop by Curry’s house the next day, and Curry gave him the green light. Kerr showed up. He acknowledged he screwed up. Then they discussed the need for Curry to value the ball more while also upping his scoring aggression.
“Typical Steph fashion,” Kerr said. “You just sat down and discussed things. He’s such a grown-up. He has such trust in my intentions.”
They went 56-10 from that point and steamrolled to a second NBA title together.
“The fact that he acted right away to come have a conversation [is what mattered],” Curry said. “We’re all just trying to win. As long as you can meet on that, that energy, you should be able to work through pretty much whatever.”
Kerr and Curry are entering their 12th NBA season together, three more than Phil Jackson and Michael Jordan and two more than Red Auerbach and Bill Russell.
They’ve been to six Finals, won four titles, accomplished Olympic gold, suffered through a 15-50 pandemic season, rebuilt themselves into a contender, watched the two-timeline plan sputter, seen franchise pillars such as Durant, Klay Thompson and Andre Iguodala depart and still believe they — along with Draymond Green — have another successful chapter to write.
“There’s a reason [Tom] Brady and [Bill] Belichick worked,” Kerr said. “There’s a reason Phil and Michael worked. It has to click. There has to be a mutual respect and there has to be a fierce, competitive desire. Passion for the job. Passion for winning. When all is said and done, it might be the most proud thing that exists. The most proud dynamic of my career will be a collaboration with Steph.”
Curry has two more seasons on his current contract. Kerr, who is not seeking an in-season extension, only has one year left. The question is presented to Curry: Could he play for another coach?
“I played for Coach [Mike Krzyzewski] twice at the world championships,” Curry said. “Mark Jackson. Keith Smart.”
Curry took the question literally. Could he? Yes.
“The game would translate,” he said.
But would he?
“I don’t want to,” Curry said. “We deserve that, I feel. Things change in this league. We can only control so much. But I think we’re in a very unique situation that we deserve the opportunity [to ride it out].”
KERR FIRST CROSSED paths with Curry when he was the general manager of the Phoenix Suns. He scouted a Davidson game in November 2007 against UCLA in Anaheim, California, when Curry was a sophomore. In the tunnel afterward, he ran into Curry’s parents. He knew Curry’s father, Dell, from their playing days. Curry’s mother, Sonya, asked Kerr whether he thought Steph could eventually claw into the NBA.
“I mean, think about that now,” Kerr said with a laugh.
Curry declared after his junior season. The Suns had the 14th pick in the 2009 draft. Kerr tried to attach Amar’e Stoudemire in a trade-up scenario to get Curry with the seventh pick. He viewed him as the perfect Steve Nash heir. The deal was close, but the Warriors ultimately backed out and drafted Curry.
“I don’t think I would’ve stayed in the job [even if I acquired him],” Kerr said. “I didn’t like the job of general manager. But the next GM would’ve been really happy.”
Five years later, Kerr was once again presented with the opportunity to work with Curry.
After a 51-win season in which a 24-year-old Curry made his first All-Star team, controlling owner Joe Lacob made the controversial decision to fire Mark Jackson in May 2014.
Jackson was Curry’s preferred head coach. The move risked alienating the franchise’s rising star. In the lead-up, Curry voiced resistance. In the aftermath, he voiced displeasure, setting the stage for what could’ve been an awkward transition to Kerr, hired just eight days after Jackson’s firing.
“Those are two separate conversations,” Curry said. “It wasn’t necessarily like I’m holding like this grudge or resentment or making Steve’s job hard because I didn’t want Mark fired. That was more of a me and Bob [Myers] conversation. Everybody knew how I felt. But once the decision’s made, like what am I gonna do — sit around moping and feeling like the future’s not bright?”
Curry is reminded that some NBA stars might do exactly that.
“Well, the way he came in made it easy,” Curry said.
Kerr asked Myers for every player’s phone number. He knew how “attached” they were to Jackson and wanted to open the communication lines to discuss.
“The only guy I was worried about was Klay because Klay wasn’t calling me back,” Kerr said. “So I called Bob, and I’m like, ‘Bob, I think maybe Klay’s pissed about this coaching change.’ Bob starts laughing. He goes, ‘Oh, don’t worry. Klay doesn’t call anybody back. He may not even know.'”
Curry answered Kerr’s initial phone call while on a golf trip in Cabo. They planned to meet once he got back to the Bay Area. They had lunch together in Berkeley — Kerr, his wife Margot, Curry, his wife Ayesha, and their daughter Riley.
But that wasn’t the forum to discuss business. The ice-breaking, important conversation came a week later at Pebble Beach. They met for a two-on-two golf match — Kerr and Lacob against Steph and Dell. The underdog pairing won.
“I even birdied two of the first four holes!” Kerr laughed. “I was feeling it.”
Curry shakes his head at the result.
“They beat us,” Curry said. “Joe played solid.”
The Warriors were in trade discussions with the Minnesota Timberwolves for Kevin Love at the time. Minnesota wanted Thompson. The Warriors were internally debating it. Curry said they spent “maybe a hole or two” on the topic. Kerr, the newest voice in the room, was “very pro-Klay,” as Curry remembers it.
But the between shots conversation shifted to Jackson, the firing, the transition and the offensive schematics Kerr believed could take Curry and the Warriors to the next level.
“That’s when I really went into my spiel,” Kerr said. “My whole thing was: ‘I’m here to help you build on the foundation that Mark has already built.’ I told him they were the fourth-ranked defense. Mark changed the culture and got them serious about two-way basketball. He established that. I said, ‘I’m not here to do anything other than help you build on the foundation that’s already there.’ And it was genuine. Mark’s a friend of mine and I was genuinely impressed with the job he had done.”
Kerr came away from the golf course that day in more ways than one.
“It helped that he is a former player,” Curry said. “It helped that you heard him talk on TV for years. It helped that I knew he was a GM even though that job didn’t go great. It helped that he wasn’t trying to blow everything up.”
0:51
Kerr waiting until after season to address deal
Kerr waiting until after season to address deal.
AFTER A SCORCHING streak of shooting in the aftermath of the Jimmy Butler trade in February, Curry hit a mini rough patch. The Warriors lost a March 17 home game to the Denver Nuggets in which Curry missed 15 of his 21 shots and turned it over seven times. Kerr told reporters afterward that Curry needed a “mental break” because of his accumulating fatigue.
“Not all players in this league can handle that being put out to the public,” Kerr said.
Three nights later, after a rest night, Curry had three turnovers and hurt his tailbone in a narrow home win over the Toronto Raptors. While Curry was aching in the postgame locker room — set to miss the next two games — Kerr lit into him in front of the team to remind everyone that their success after Butler’s arrival was due to their better ball security.
“Most people think Steph can do what he wants,” Green said. “No. He’s on Steph’s ass all the time. Defense, turnovers. He coaches Steph really, really, really hard. I don’t think people realize that.”
In a November 2023 game, Curry flung a particularly questionable fourth-quarter pass in Minnesota, landing out of bounds near Kerr. The coach stomped around in disgust on the sidelines like Bobby Knight.
“The next day I pulled him aside,” Kerr said, relaying his message to Curry. “‘Hey, I was watching the tape and I saw my reaction, I shouldn’t have done that.'”
Curry’s response: “Hell no. That was a terrible decision. You got to coach me.”
“He actually probably gets on me more now than ever,” Curry said. “The one conversation we’ve had is to coach me like you would coach everybody because that’ll help strengthen your voice in the locker room, create that trust.”
Kerr is more often in a reflective state at this stage of his life. Curry, laser-focused on maximizing the back end of his legendary career, shields himself from it.
“The deeper we get into this thing, it’s the weirdest concept to kind of put in perspective,” Curry said. “I know there will be plenty of times where we’ll be able to crack open a glass of wine and like shoot the s— the accolades and experiences and just laugh. But it’s just hard to kind of get there right now.”
But he still has moments of reflection and mementos that he has stashed in what he calls his “keepsake box” at home. Among them: two letters. The first is from his brother, Seth, a valuable one to him because Seth “doesn’t talk that much.”
The second letter is from Kerr, written and hand-delivered at practice in the days after that postgame soundbite on Christmas 2016.
“He’s the only coach I’ve known to write handwritten letters,” Curry said. “It’s when s—‘s really going on. It’s not for everybody because people show love and appreciation in different ways. But I do appreciate it because it gives you somebody’s true thoughts and perspectives. It’s a lost art.”
KERR LOVES TO tell the story about his San Antonio dinners with Gregg Popovich. Every time the wine is poured, Kerr says, Popovich raises his glass and toasts Tim Duncan. The first time he saw it, Kerr asked Popovich why.
“Without Tim, none of this happened,” Popovich told him.
Kerr’s offensive philosophy and system helped unlock Curry to become an all-time great. He shares some slice of credit in lifting the Warriors and Curry to dynasty heights. But, as Kerr said, the “sun” in their “solar system” is Curry because of the skill, the work, the culture-setting attitude and the ability to be coached.
“The rest of us have done a good job,” Kerr said. “I think I’ve done a good job. I think Joe’s done a great job as an owner. I think Bob and Mike [Dunleavy] have been good. Draymond’s been good. Everybody. But you take Steph out of this, none of this has happened. And I think we should never forget that. I know I don’t for sure.”
Kerr has been voicing his appreciation to Curry more often in recent years. After Curry had his signature flurry to win the gold medal for Team USA at the Paris Olympics, Netflix cameras caught Kerr telling Curry: “I’m so f—ing lucky to be a part of your life. Holy s—. You are amazing. The finest human being I’ve ever met in my life, and I mean that.”
Curry doesn’t agree with every Kerr decision. He said they most often battle over minute totals, substitution patterns and the decision to rest him. There have certainly been times when he’s wanted more pick-and-roll usage over the years.
But the easiest way to understand Curry’s support of Kerr is Kerr’s longevity. Curry said management has never approached him about Kerr’s coaching security. It knows better.
“I would just assume there’s an understanding,” Curry said.
“Steve is Steph’s guy,” Green said. “So even if there was ever a thought [to let Kerr go], it don’t work. You speak to the Tim and Pop thing. That’s his guy. You see MJ, like, ‘If Phil ain’t here, I ain’t here.’ It’s along those same lines. There’s no Steph without Steve.”
Kerr made headlines recently when he said he wouldn’t seek a contract extension beyond this season. It puts his future in question. But Kerr made it clear it is just a wait-and-see approach and told ESPN he would not actively choose to leave Curry and the Warriors for another NBA coaching job. It’s more of a stick around or step away choice.
“Management and ownership would have to want it to continue,” Kerr said. “I would have to want it to continue. Steph would have to. I’m not finishing my contract and saying, ‘Alright, I think I’ll go leave for such and such job around the league somewhere. That’s not happening.”
