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"Getting to Know Steve Kerr" - An unnecessarily excessive look into the mind of Steve Kerr

"If you know the enemy and know yourself, your victory will not stand in doubt; if you know Heaven and know Earth, you may make your victory complete.” -Sun Tzu, The Art of War

The basketball universe is overflowing with data waiting to get processed into meaningful information that can help a team win. That's how most NBA executives see it anyways, and they are looking for the perfect coach who is information savvy in addition to being a basketball guy.

Before I go any further, I want to say being information savvy is not exclusive to understanding advanced metrics. Watching tape, reading scouting reports, building databases, and crunching numbers all provide valuable information. The problem is everything is en masse now, and the solution is finding someone who knows how to employ his resources (human or machine) more effectively and efficiently than the competition.

Gregg Popovich, Rick Carlisle, Terry Stotts, and Eric Spoelstra are some coaches that have really shown to be everything management wants. Brad Stevens was hired for that reason. There's plenty of documentation over their approach to coaching so I will skip the details.

Yes, Steve Kerr knows the Triangle, but so does Kurt Rambis. Steve Kerr is a hot commodity because he has the potential to be one of those coaches that's the perfect mix of basketball, communications, and analytics expertise.

Plus, there are other things that make Kerr a popular target.

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Steve Kerr has done a lot during his professional career...

In the 1988 draft, the Phoenix suns drafted the Steve Kerr from the University of Arizona with the 50th overall pick. Some speculate that then-owner Jerry Colangelo only did so as a personal favor to Steve Kerr's coach, the great Lute Olson.

From 1988 to 2003, Steve Kerr played for six different teams and six different head coaches: Cotton Fitzsimmons at Phoenix, Lenny Wilkens at Cleveland, Matt Guokas at Orlando, Phil Jackson at Chicago, Gregg Popovich at San Antonio, and Maurice Cheeks at Portland.

After retiring from the NBA in 2003, Steve Kerr joined TNT as an NBA analyst and contributed to Yahoo! as a sports commentator.

Sometime in 2003, UA grad Robert Sarver had long dreamed of owning an NBA franchise, and after amassing enough wealth he consulted with legendary UA coach Lute Olson for advice (Sarver once dated his daughter). Olson sent Sarver straight to his former player Steve Kerr. According to Sarver:

"Lute brought up Steve's name right away as a guy who could be trusted, who knew everybody in the NBA from top to bottom, and who obviously knows the pro game in and out," Sarver says. PNT.

With the help of Kerr, Sarver finalized the deal with the previous owner Jerry Colangelo in 2004 for $401 million.

In 2007, Steve Kerr left TNT to become the Phoenix Suns general manager, and after a strenuous tenure, Steve Kerr left the Suns front office in 2010 to go back to TNT. Looking back, most would say Steve Kerr was a pretty good general manager who had some bad luck.

After firing Rich Cho in 2012, Trail Blazers President Larry Miller put a lot of effort into his unsuccessful attempt at recruiting Steve Kerr as the team's new general manager. TOL.

Steve Kerr has also been a regular contributor to the BS Report on Grantland since 2011, which I will reference extensively here.

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...and Steve Kerr has a lot of connections (this is one of those other things).

In the recent 2013-14 season, there were eight head coaches, at least six assistant coaches, seven GMs/executives, and three majority owners that are former colleagues of Steve Kerr the player, the TV analyst, or the general manager.

Head coaches: Gregg Popovich, Mike Budenholzer, Mike D'antoni, Mike Brown, Tyrone Corbin, Maurice Cheeks, Mike Woodson, and Jeff Hornacek
Assistant coaches: Rasheed Wallace, Mark Price, Terry Porter, Alvin Gentry, Pete Myers, and Igor Kokoskov
GMs and Execs: RC Buford, Phil Jackson, David Griffin, Danny Ferry, Flip Saunders, Sam Presti, and John Paxson
Majority Owners: Robert Sarver, Michael Jordan, and Peter Holt
Other basketball figures: Lute Olson (HOF NCAA Coach), Shaquille O'neal (min. owner SAC, TNT), Kevin Johnson (mayor, NBPA), Jerry Colangelo (USA Basketball), and Damon Stoudemire (ac. Arizona)

The list is more quantitative than qualitative, but it is still a substantial list. Just to give some perspective, Phoenix GM Steve Kerr often sought advice from friends and mentors such as Lute Olson, Jerry Colangelo, Johnny "Redd" Kerr, John Paxson, Danny Ferry, RC Buford, Gregg Popovich, and Doug Collins. Suns.com.

That's a pretty impressive support group.

The point I'm trying to make here is this: Steve Kerr is a walking insider-info database and a one-man HR department, and that raises Kerr's value quite a bit.

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Still, would Steve Kerr the GM have hired Steve Kerr the coach? Maybe Steve Kerr can answer that.

Here's some of things Steve Kerr has said back at the 2014 MIT SSAC Basketball Analytics panel.

SK: We had a couple people in our organization who ran a lot of numbers, mostly line up combination stuff... I think the tricky part was def getting the coach to buy into it. I think that is still a major issue around the league.

Interesting tidbit: one of the guys who ran the numbers for Kerr at Phoenix is David Griffin, Cleveland Cavalier's interim executive.

SK to SVG: You were talking earlier about sometimes the numbers don't add up. When I was in Phoenix my last year (2009-10), Amare Stoudemire was going to be a free agent. We had to think about trading him so we are watching tape of all these guys, and we were looking at JJ Hickson.
One of our stats guys says "JJ hits a better shooting percentage from 0-5 feet than Amare Stoudemire."
I said "you're kidding me right?"
He said "no it's right here 65% to 62%."
I'm thinking "no that's impossible." Amare is one of the great finishers in the history of this league especially with all of the tough four footers... So we watched JJ Hickson, and after about 20 minutes I realized... All he can do is dunk. He didn't try any from 2-5 feet.
So, I would want somebody who can look at the numbers and figure out pretty quickly "that number won't work." There's so much information, but how you get through it all... I think it would help a lot to get somebody with both backgrounds.

Wait, I could have told you Amare Stoudemire was better than J.J. Hickson.

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Let's take a deeper look into Steve Kerr's basketball mind.

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Steve Kerr loves defense.

After his first season as GM, Steve Kerr fired Mike D'antoni because he wanted a more defensively minded coach. Here is what Steve Kerr had to say in his GM diary after hiring Terry Porter as D'antoni's replacement:

Terry has put together a great staff that includes two former NBA head coaches – Bill Cartwright and Alvin Gentry. Bill and Alvin have a ton of experience in this league, and they’ll be able to help Terry deal with the many pressures and demands of the head job. The staff also includes two very impressive young coaches: Igor Kokoskov, a Serbian coach with tremendous knowledge of both the NBA and the international game, plus one of the all time great players in Suns history - Dan Majerle. Dan has already brought great energy to the job, and he has really connected with our players. And of course, he embodies everything Terry is trying to teach: defense and toughness. Suns.com

Steve Kerr did fire Porter halfway into the season and promoted assistant coach Alvin Gentry as the new head coach. On the plus side, Gentry did take Phoenix all the way to 2010 Western Conference Finals.

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Steve Kerr loves low post defense.

SK: I'll tell you why I think OKC needed to keep Perkins. They don't beat the Spurs last year without Perkins. He was able to guard Duncan one on one that whole series... I don't think Perkins is the greatest players on earth, but I think he is one of the best low post defenders. There's about five teams where you have to have one of those guys to advance in the playoffs. - BS Report, 01/15/2013

In 2007, GM Steve Kerr made his most controversial move by trading Shawn Marion and Marcus Banks for 35 year old Shaquille O'neal. Although the trade was originally Sarver and D'antoni's idea, part of me thinks Kerr agreed to this trade because Shaquille O'neal had the potential to be "one of those guys" down at the post.

Steve Kerr even received death threats and "ASU was right" comments because of the Shaquille O'neal trade. By the way, if you don't know about Steve Kerr vs ASU, then you are missing out on one of the greatest "Fuck you. I win." games in basketball history. PNT.

Fast forward to the 2008 draft. Steve Kerr drafts Robin Lopez with their 15th pick. Here are some more thoughts from his GM diary:

It’s rare to find an active 7 footer who can run and defend, so we felt fortunate that he fell to us at 15. Robin will provide something we don’t have – a versatile big guy who can get out on the perimeter to defend screen and rolls, but who also has the size and mentality to protect the rim. Suns.com

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Steve Kerr also loves Zach Lowe.

SK: If I ever get back in the league, I may have to hire Zach Lowe from you. - BS Report, 01/15/2013

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Steve Kerr is not the biggest fan of small ball.

Steve Kerr has always shown more enthusiasm for more traditionally balanced teams with a strong post presence. His favorite teams coming into the 2013-14 season were Chicago (with Rose) and Indiana. Here is what Steve Kerr had to say about Indiana on the BS Report from 11/19/2013.

SK: You know what I really love is that they're old school. There are so few teams that can really pound you inside and play inside-out physical basketball. There aren't really many low post players, but they got two really good ones. If they were a football team, they would be the 49ers. They are just gonna run the ball down your throat and play defense and they kinda just wear you down. You just don't see it anymore with everybody playing the stretch four, playing small ball. That's another thing I like about them is they're doing things that other teams won't do or can't do, and that makes them unique.

What I really got out of this is Steve Kerr realizes that every team has different needs, and teams should be played and formed to their existing strengths even if the coach or a GM prefers a different style.

After all, Steve Kerr did sign Channing Frye as a free agent and was immediately used as a stretch-four under his watch. Also, while he did trade away Boris Diaw after his first season there, Kerr did explicitly admit that he missed Diaw coming off the bench at the four once Stoudemire started having injury problems.

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Steve Kerr has a knack for spotting talented guards.

In the 2007 draft, Steve Kerr drafted Rudy Fernandez with their 24th pick, but was traded to Portland for cash and James Jones.

In the 2008 draft, Steve Kerr was hell bent on getting Goran Dragic after flying him in for a private practice. They traded the rights to there 48th pick, cash, and a 2009 2nd round pick to San Antonio for the rights to their 45th pick. Here is what Kerr had to say about Dragic after drafting him:

As soon as we chose Robin, we set out to climb high enough in the second round to land Goran Dragic, a Slovenian point guard... we had him ranked as the second best point guard prospect in the draft after Derrick Rose... Goran didn’t work out for any other NBA teams, because he wanted to play for the Suns. He’s a huge Steve Nash fan and would like to learn under Steve as his backup. Suns.com

With Steve Nash, Goran Dragic, Grant Hill (post-injury), Jason Richardson, and (almost) Stephen Curry under his belt, he had a pretty good eye for talented guards.

Wait. Stephen Curry?

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Did I mention Steve Kerr almost landed a trade that would send Amare Stoudemire to Golden State for the draft rights to Stephen Curry?

Here's a Q&A with Kerr about the 2009 draft:

SK: It was close. There was not a deal done. But it was tricky because of Amare’s physical situation... But we were very far down the road.
Q:When you took Earl Clark over Jrue Holiday at 14 was that partly because you thought you had Curry?
SK: We liked Holiday a lot. We still had Nash. We had Goran Dragic who we loved, and we had a potential thought we had a potential deal involving Curry... But we were in desperate need of a wing defender and we liked Earl’s potential as a 3-4 defender. Obviously in retrospect, Holiday was the better player...

(Steve Kerr loves defense.)

Q: Those are four pretty good PGs—Nash, Curry, Dragic and Holiday. Wow, other than that’s too many point guards, can you imagine that roster?
SK: Yeah, those are four good point guards, huh?
Q: So was the plan to play Curry with Nash?
SK: Oh yeah, the plan was to have that be kind of succession plan.
Q: I guess the way Curry is playing now explains why you wanted him so badly.
SK: The first time I saw him play live was in Anaheim. He was with Davidson and played UCLA in the Wooden classic and he was magical. He didn’t even shoot that well but just his feel and his passing. I was with a lot of our scouts. We are watching, and we are like, "This is the second coming of Steve Nash. This guy is special." MN

Steve Nash and Stephen Curry. Together. Just think about that.

Here is a photo of Steve Kerr and Stephen Curry from 2009 (their names are oddly similar).
http://www.nba.com/suns/photos/skerr_540_091223.jpg

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What else did Clairvoyant Kerr have to say?

Note: All of these are from the BS Report, which is the reason behind the heading.

"You know who I have not given up on is Jimmer... The way he shoots it, as hard as he works, he can kind of play both positions if you work out the defensive matchup... I think he can be a good player on a good team." - 01/15/2013

"Take Thomas Robinson (SAC) and put him on a team and a coach who says: Alright. Here's the deal. You're going to be Reggie Evans or Dennis Rodman. All you are going to do is chase the ball down. You are going to play with incredible energy, but I want you to lead the league with rebounding. With offensive rebounding." - 01/15/2013

"Anthony Davis is absolutely ridiculous... Over the next 6-8 years as Lebron fades, he might be the guy we are talking about in terms of the best player in the league." - 11/19/2013

"I also like Jason Kidd's potential as a coach. He's got the temperament. He's well respected. I think he's going to be really good, It might be that his best coaching days will come in his next job... like Bill Belichick." -11/19/2013

"Let's hope that as basketball fans that Embiid- like Hibbert, like Duncan- actually stays in school. I'm convinced that the only way to develop a low post game is in college. You can't do it in the NBA. It's too hard. If you get to the NBA and you go "alright, now I'm going to develop a low post game," you're just going to get destroyed on a nightly basis, and you're never going to gain any confidence." -11/19/2013

"Pat is one of the smartest guys in the league. One of the greatest executives ever. He usually beats the curve. The league has gone small... since the D'antoni Suns. I would say that's been the trend. Here we are this year , and three of the four teams in the conference finals are more kind of old school, beat-you-up teams. Here's Pat Riley, who has always been a proponent of defense and rebounding, watching his team getting pummeled. Even though they can win the title, is Pat sitting there thinking "You know what? The trend is heading back in the other direction. I've got to do something before everybody opts out, and I've got to go bigger inside and help Lebron out defensively..." I'm just throwing that out there. I know Pat's always a step ahead of the league." -05/30/2013

Like I said, Steve Kerr really loves the low post.

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Steve Kerr really values good team and front office chemistry

From Kerr's GM Diary:
It’s a big part of the job, talking to the guys, making sure they’re feeling good about our team and observing the chemistry and the unity. One of the most satisfying feelings with this year’s team has been standing in hotel lobbies, watching 8 to 10 of our players heading out together to go grab dinner. We have a very close group, which is one of the reasons we have a good team. Those guys play hard for each other. Suns.com

Another excerpt from Kerr's GM Diary:
When it comes to the team’s playing rotation, I never told Mike (D’Antoni) who to play, and I’ll never tell Alvin (Gentry) who to play. I may make suggestions that are all in the spirit of getting better or I may give him an idea, but I won’t tell any coach who he has play or what he has to do. That’s his job.
My job is to support the coach and to help him through the difficult times because as tough as my job is, Alvin’s is ten-times harder. The NBA coaching job is incredibly difficult.
There is a stress level that those guys go through that’s really, really difficult to deal with. Think about the average coaching tenure in this league, and you can understand why coaches feel the heat. Whatever I can do to ease the pressure and strain off of Alvin, that’s what I need to accomplish. Suns.com

From the same Q&A about the potential Stephen Curry trade:
SK: If you remember, we were kind at the final stages of our run with Nash and Amare and so we were in a difficult spot. We were looking towards the future but we also knew we still had a team that was very competitive.
In fact by not making that deal we were able to keep that group together and made the conference finals that year with Amare as our starting four. We had a great season, but had an aging team but knew were eventually going to have to make that transition. That (trade) would have been the first domino to fall for the Suns’ sort of re-invention.
But in some ways it worked out fine because we had a great year, we came within a couple games of getting to the finals. It was just one of those things.

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Steve Kerr has really pondered about health and technology

Steve Kerr's injury problems started when he blew out his knee in the 1986 World Championships Madrid, but perhaps his biggest injury problems were not personal injuries. At Phoenix, Steve Kerr had to manage the health of Steve Nash, Grant Hill, and Amare Stoudemire, and under his watch, the Phoenix medical and training staff did some amazing things with those three.

Kerr also has some ideas with applying advanced metrics for medical and training purposes:
I like the angle of the health issue, trying to use the Sport Vu stuff to calculate recovery.
One of the things teams do in the NBA is if a guy doesn't play he gets on the bike for 20 minutes. Is there a way to design our conditioning programs based on- not only how much a guy played- but the stress on his body? That information is probably all available. There's probably some things we can do to try to improve our conditioning programs."

As a TV guy, Kerr heard a lot of theories behind the injury bug with guards. Not surprisingly, Phil Jackson's theory interested him the most:
The only one that sort of made me think was Phil Jackson said "it's all the pick and roll" because a lot of the guys that's getting hurt are the guards who are attacking. Maybe if you take that theory and you take all this information we are talking about maybe you can come up with an interesting .

Both of those quotes are also from the 2014 Basketball Analytics panel.

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Steve Kerr pays a lot of attention to college basketball

Aside from being a college basketball analyst, here is this excerpt from his GM Diary:
I go to a lot of ASU games. Anytime anybody comes through that has a potential pro, I’ll go over and watch ASU. The last couple of years, the Pac 10 has been loaded with NBA talent, so it’s been easy to see a lot of players right in our own backyard. It’s also fun to see different strategies that teams are employing, and to see where the game is trending. Even though I’m a Wildcat, I enjoy watching Herb Sendak’s zone defense at ASU. So even when I am not scouting, I keep an eye on what’s going on out there at the college and pro level. Suns.com

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Technically, Steve Kerr has at least two days of coaching experience or learning.

SK: . The next year I left the suns. I went back to tv. I called Popovich and I asked them if I could sit in on a couple of their camp practices... He invited me to the coaching retreat that they do every year before camp starts. So I sat in for two days with the coaches, and it was awesome. It was a great experience for me.
That was the moment when Pop basically announced that the Spurs had to start running. That we can't win anymore by just going into Duncan. We have to become Parker's team. It was cool. I was sitting in the conference room watching tape and everything Pop was showing. "We have to push the ball. We gotta run. We have to outscore our opponents. We have to change our identity."
From that moment on it became Tony's team, and they just got better and better. -BS Report, 05/30/2013

By the way, I never knew San Antonio offered an $80 million max contract to Jason Kidd after beating him and the Nets in the 2003 finals. All right under Parker's nose!

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Speaking of Jason Kidd...

BS: Let me ask you this. You just retired, you won your last ring at San Antonio . Could you have just immediately started coaching a team four months later?
SK: No. No.
BS: Let's say... Phil Jackson's leaving the Lakers, you have Kobe and Shaq, Karl Malone, and Gary Payton. You're going to be in LA in this big fish bowl, and they offered you $5 million a year to do it.
(Steve Kerr gives a hearty chuckle.)
SK: That's tough, and that's a tough one to turn away, but no I wouldn't have felt prepared. I think coming from TV is a little different. Guys like Doc and Mark Jackson have done it and been pretty successful, but that's with a chance to kind to get away kind of see the league from a different perspective and have a chance to get with coaches and learn some different things instead of just diving in headfirst.
I don't think there's any position in life where if you never done it before you can just dive in headfirst and say "this is going to be easy." There's always going to be an adjustment period.
When you take one of these jobs, whether its gm or coaching in the NBA, everything is about where the team is and what are the expectations and the timing of when you take it. I think Brad Stevens was brilliant to take that Celtics job when he did.
Expected to win right away and no chance for an adjustment period? That's real difficult.

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Any last thoughts, Steve Kerr?
SK: Like anything else. You need work. You need some experience. The environment in which you gain that experience is really critical in the NBA. I think guys have proven they can do it right away if they're given a team that needs to grow and they can grow along with that team. When the expectations are off the charts right away, it can be pretty tough. - BS Report, 11/19/2013

Best of luck to you, Steve Kerr.