Bear Down Wildcats

Is tearing it up in the league. GS is 19-2 and have won 14 in a row. I doubt anyone here is surprised but I would imagine there are many who wondered if he could coach.

Maybe one day he would look at his alma matter should we be in need of a coach. How fun would that be? Steeeeeeeeeeeeve Keeeeeeeeeeerrrrrrrrrrr

Nice article on Kerr.
http://espn.go.com/blog/golden-state-wa ... next-level

NBA games haven't been this fun to watch in a long time. Steph for MVP

Kerr making poor JET chase Curry all over the floor and through screen after screen after screen is uncool. Have some sympathy for an older Cat.

This is what he wanted to build in Phoenix when he was GM. I'm glad this style is finally shredding teams.

And that Iggy dunk last night.... Epic.

splitsecond wrote:This is what he wanted to build in Phoenix when he was GM. I'm glad this style is finally shredding teams.

And that Iggy dunk last night.... Epic.

I wouldn't say that Golden State is shredding Houston. Both games in Oakland cam down to the last minute, and both could have gone either way.

Kerr's boys killing the Rockets...

All time great team

Harden is such a joke of play. Mediocre with great marketability.

Kerr's boys kicked some ass tonight. Love it.

Catintheheat wrote:

splitsecond wrote:This is what he wanted to build in Phoenix when he was GM. I'm glad this style is finally shredding teams.

And that Iggy dunk last night.... Epic.

I wouldn't say that Golden State is shredding Houston. Both games in Oakland cam down to the last minute, and both could have gone either way.

And now?

Puerco wrote:

Catintheheat wrote:

splitsecond wrote:This is what he wanted to build in Phoenix when he was GM. I'm glad this style is finally shredding teams.

And that Iggy dunk last night.... Epic.

I wouldn't say that Golden State is shredding Houston. Both games in Oakland cam down to the last minute, and both could have gone either way.

And now?

haha. I stand corrected. I should have known you should never stand up for someone who was a scummie.

Would have liked to see Steph go all the way to see the result. I think Houston would still have taken it based n Harden's play. I would have expected GS' newest D scheme on Harden to push down his scoring capability: The lanes weren't about to become available, so he just nails 3 after 3.

Hope Curry is OK as advertised. Nasty, nasty air-trip with a major thump on the back of his head.

I can't take my eyes off JT on D. Little dude is a menace.

I can't stand the Hackas, and was surprised Steve would resort to them with both Howard and then Josh Smith. About 10 calls between them, with 4 straight on Smith in the 4th. Virtually all away from play---good grief.

Steve won two titles with the coach who invented the Hackas.

He almost pulled a miracle last night employing them. That Barbosa three stays in, it's a 3-point game with minutes to play after trailing by 25 and losing you MVP for half the game.

As much as they suck for game play, they are smart to employ. Took Smith (7-7 from field) and Howard (best rebounder off the floor for final minutes).

Gotta win game 5. Can't send this back to Houston.

Warriors are due for electric shooting performance at home. Hopefully Smith and Ariza shot themselves out in game 4, but still wildly Chuck threes. That'll find the Rockets in a hole quickly.

Main Event wrote:All time great team

Literally

Ranked 4th right now, could pass the '85/86 Celtics with a few more good wins

http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/the ... ng-to-elo/

It's so frigging cool to have first year Steve coaching what I think most of us hopefully believe will be the NBA champion.

And tres cool to have he, JT, Iggy, Steph Curry, Luke, Bruce together.

I can't get enough of Curry's shot. It's mechanical perfection. Starts his jump low and quiet but ends up releasing high and ultra quick to avoid blocks. His strategy of course is to release while he's rising----by definition during the jump. Perfect kinetics to actually connect the rise from the jump with the release; contrary to the conventional quick jump to height, hesitate for a miniscule moment, then snap.

Then there's his terrific arc, about half a foot higher at its apex than most shooters' and said to be perfect for the 45degree basket entry the experts say is ideal to make the hole its largest. He apparently believes you can't make the basketball smaller so why not make the basket larger? Good grief.

Read a couple of interesting things about Curry in the LATimes:

....He takes 100 shots after each game. Runs the key perimeter shooting fast.
....Also has a running free throw game with Coach Kerr. The rules that keep Curry on top? Two points for a swish, 1 point a non-swish make, none for a miss. That should do it against a 49 year old,

If you havent seen all of the pregame shooting/dribbling he does you gotta check out the Warriors instagram page:

http://websta.me/n/warriors?vm=grid

Harden...lol. Most turnovers in a playoff game. 11 so far. A whole quarter to go.

The knee to Klay Thompson's head by Ariza sure looked intentional to me. That's BS. No one should ever try to hurt someone in sports...ever.

Catintheheat wrote:The knee to Klay Thompson's head by Ariza sure looked intentional to me. That's BS. No one should ever try to hurt someone in sports...ever.

Nah. He was just going up for a block and couldn't control himself.

Now that one on Howard was intentional.

Lute must be so proud. Quite a an Arizona presence last night. Kerr & Walton as coaches, Iggy playing the best 6 point game ever and McHale praising JT as a player with championship blood in his veins. It was cool to see JT the 1st one over to congratulate Kerr and the Nick & Matt. We are truly spoiled as UA BB fans.

http://www.tucsonnewsnow.com/story/2921 ... lecgbypass

Tucson, AZ (KOLD) - Steve Kerr's success at Golden State isn't all that surprising to his former Wildcat teammate Matt Muehlebach. As the Warriors ready for Cleveland in Kerr's rookie season as head coach, Muehlebach spoke with Sports Director Damien Alameda about his relationship with Kerr and Warriors assistant/former Wildcat Bruce Fraser.

Among the topics of discussion:

1. The secret to Kerr's success

2. How Fraser helped prepare NBA MVP Stephen Curry for his breakout season

3. A walk down memory lane from their Arizona days.

Interview on ESPN now.

ESPN just called out ASU for "Where's your daddy"

Awesome.

yes check it out! Its awesome.

Bear down Steve!

Golden State Wildcat connection. Iggy, Walton, Steve = Boost to UOA recruiting?

CalStateTempe wrote:yes check it out! Its awesome.

Did they mention ASU?

http://www.businessinsider.com/steve-ke ... ors-2015-2

Steve Kerr spent 2 years building a manifesto on how to coach before turning the Golden State Warriors into the best team in the NBA

The Golden State Warriors fired head coach Mark Jackson after finishing 51-31 and losing in the first round of the playoffs last year.

They hired first-time head coach Steve Kerr, and have since become the best team in the league.

At 44-10, the Warriors rank first in defensive rating, second in offensive rating, and have the best point differential in the NBA.

Kerr likes to deflect the attention and credit by saying he simply inherited a good team, but according to SI's Chris Ballard, Kerr's coaching philosophies have been two years in the making.

According to Ballard, while Kerr was still a TV analyst for TNT, he began keeping a Word file on his laptop where he compiled notes on plays, philosophies, workouts, and team policies. He then expanded from written notes to full video. From Ballard:

Kerr began collecting plays too, pausing games on the flat-screen at his San Diego home whenever he saw an action he liked – a backdoor lob off an inbounds or a particularly potent flare screen. Then he’d shoot an email to Kelly Peters, a friend and coach at nearby Torrey Pines High (and now a Warriors advance scout). Peters pulled the footage and compiled it using iMovie. Week by week, Kerr’s file – named ATOs, for ‘After Timeouts” – grew.

By the spring of 2014, the video library had swelled to over 50 plays and the Word file had morphed into a detailed Power Point presentation.

Kerr has been brilliant from top to bottom in his first year as coach.

At the start of the season, he decided to place 11-year veteran Andre Iguodala on the bench while starting third-year forward Harrison Barnes (wh0 had struggled under Jackson). He also replaced power forward David Lee with third-year forward Draymond Green in the starting lineup.

Both players have excelled as starters, putting up career years, and the Warriors' starting five has been the best five-man unit in the league based on net rating.

As an in-game strategist, Kerr has been great.

The Warriors mastered a "weave" play that throws off defenses and gets a wide variety of looks, like an open three-pointer:



More GIFs/Vids in the link

The Warriors are currently the favorite to win the NBA title, and given their youth — from the players to Kerr as a rookie head coach — they could conceivably get better in the coming years.

Go Andre!

http://sports.yahoo.com/news/iguodala-s ... NlYwNzYw--

Meet Nick U'Ren:

http://www.si.com/nba/2015/06/12/warrio ... -cavaliers

Andre Iguodala was 125-1 to win NBA Finals MVP and now is the favorite

http://ftw.usatoday.com/2015/06/andre-i ... bron-james

https://twitter.com/ESPNStatsInfo/statu ... 68/photo/1

Looks like Iggy is holding Lebron to 33 percent shooting in the series. Holy shizzle! And if offensive fouls and travels were called ... Wait that doesnt affect fg% so much does it

Catintheheat wrote:Andre Iguodala was 125-1 to win NBA Finals MVP and now is the favorite

http://ftw.usatoday.com/2015/06/andre-i ... bron-james

I have Dellavedova as the MVP even if the Warriors win in six. Without Della, the series would be over already.

Yes, I know. Curry stood him up in game 5, but there wouldn't have been a game 5 or 6 without him.

Ehhh..

I'm not on the "Lebron is having an all-time finals performance" bandwagon. He' still not shooting over 40 percent for the series. Outside of last night's loss, the Warriors wins so far have come in games where Lebron faltered late and in overtime (Game 1) or had a really bad game (Game 4). With that said, he has had two elite defenders in Green and Iguodala on him, and though I don't think he is completely by himself out there like some are saying (a new guy has had a career night in nearly every game since Kyrie went down, and people act like the Warriors wouldn't play defense on Kyrie and he would be lights out all series), to say it is an uphill battle for him would be a severe understatement. Should the Cavs win, Lebron willing his team to a title is of legend. It will go down as one of the most impressive championship feats in sports history. If they come back and win 6 and 7, and Lebron plays like he did last night especially late, then it is an all-time finals performance even aside from will.

Delladova had one great night. Curry struggled for a stretch in the Houston series too, and while I think Della has done an outstanding job on him defensively, last night we saw how Della doesn't matter in this series. If Curry is playing well, if the warriors are playing like they should, he is a very small factor. Lebron is the only one who matters right now. It doesn't matter how the Warriors are playing, the outcome of the series is in his hands.

Mentioning Lute in his postgame interview. Good for him across the board.

RichardCranium wrote: I have Dellavedova as the MVP even if the Warriors win in six. Without Della, the series would be over already.

Yes, I know. Curry stood him up in game 5, but there wouldn't have been a game 5 or 6 without him.

Absolutely RAPT to be wrong.

Cat-grats Iggy!!!!

Really feel like Delly's breakout game might have damned the Cavs into thinking he's a viable offensive option, he was an absolute black hole since.

MrBug708 wrote:Really feel like Delly's breakout game might have damned the Cavs into thinking he's a viable offensive option, he was an absolute black hole since.

Delly is a junk player.

MVP! Bear the f...k down Iggy!

Such a graceful guy to shout out Coach Olson almost first-off! You can imagine he'd be a great guy to play for.

Question. Did I miss the Cavs walking out without handshakes? I saw Steve congratulating the Cavs one-by-one as they left the arena. In itself, big props for Steve if he stepped up for shakes; but what's up with the Cavs running away from a defeat? Or did I miss the traditional team line-up handshakes?

I think I remember Lebron going up to congratulate Curry before he left. From what I remember, there wasn't much more from the Cavs.

EOCT wrote:Such a graceful guy to shout out Coach Olson almost first-off! You can imagine he'd be a great guy to play for.

Question. Did I miss the Cavs walking out without handshakes? I saw Steve congratulating the Cavs one-by-one as they left the arena. In itself, big props for Steve if he stepped up for shakes; but what's up with the Cavs running away from a defeat? Or did I miss the traditional team line-up handshakes?

It's not too usual at the end of the finals. Usually, the celebration takes over when the clock hits zero. An example:

1988 NBA Finals: Pistons at Lakers, Gm 7 part 12/…: http://youtu.be/sNaAsmMGpWU

And LeBron congratulated Curry and the entire Warriors bench. It was a classy move.

Has any other coach won a title in their first year of coaching much less in the nba?

Pat Riley was the last. There were more, but many years before. Its been done in baseball, I know Brenly was a rookie when the dbacks won in 01. Football I am drawing a blank, I want to say Seifert who took that great 49er team from Walsh. It was either his first or 2nd year he won.

Has anyone ever won a title in their first year as a coach, anywhere? This was the first time Kerr had coached anything, junior high to nba

Ah, read that wrong. It's possible it happened, probably not in the last 50 years or so if it has. I could see it happen in a player/coach position, or a dude that just retired and got a managerial position (more common in baseball in the older times).

Edit: quickly looking, Bucky Harris in the 20's in his first season as player/manager. Tris Speaker, Frankie Fisch, Bill Terry, and Rogers Hornsby won in their first FULL seasons of being player/manager. So technically no for them. Highly doubt it has happened in football or the NBA. So yes, very impressive by Kerr.

rgdeuce wrote:Pat Riley was the last. There were more, but many years before. Its been done in baseball, I know Brenly was a rookie when the dbacks won in 01. Football I am drawing a blank, I want to say Seifert who took that great 49er team from Walsh. It was either his first or 2nd year he won.

Most were assistants first, though.

It was a really nontraditional coaching matchup. 2 guys in their first season as NBA coaches. I'd be surprised if that's been done much (excluding the first year of a league, where everyone is a first year coach).

A Wildcat hunch: Olson knew Kerr would deliver


6 hours ago • By Bruce Pascoe

Nearly five months before the Golden State Warriors won the NBA title, Lute Olson called it.

And not just because the Warriors, coached by former Arizona standout Steve Kerr, were rattling off a NBA-best 35-6 record at the time.

It was because Kerr invited Olson and his wife, Kelly, into the Warriors’ locker room, after the former UA coach took in a 126-101 Warriors win over Sacramento on Jan. 24 that featured a rather insane 52-point effort from Klay Thompson.

“We had an opportunity to go in the locker room and visit with some of the player and staff and you could just see it was a special group,” Olson said Wednesday. “They were not like most NBA teams. They were really into ‘team’ and I give Steve and his staff credit for that.

“The way they played together, they were very unselfish, and that showed (Tuesday) night. After we left the locker room there (in Oakland), I said to Kelly, ‘I’ll tell you what, I’m not sure anybody is going to keep them from winning the NBA championship.’ It was just because of how they are into team play, not just offensively but defensively as well.”

But after the Warriors put away the Cavaliers 105-97 in Game 6 to win the trophy on Tuesday, there actually was one surprise for Olson. That came during Kerr’s postgame interview on ABC.

“I’m thinking of Lute Olson,” Kerr said. “I’m thinking of Phil Jackson, Lenny Wilkens, Gregg Popovich. I’ve been blessed to play for the greatest coaches ever, and I’ve learned a ton from them, and they’ve all helped me get here.”

Olson was stunned.

“When Steve made that comment after the game, I mean, just to even be mentioned in the same sentence with Popovich and Phil Jackson, that definitely hit me hard,” Olson said. “I was shocked when he said that.”

After the postgame interviews concluded on ABC, Lute and Kelly quickly flipped on ESPN for more interviews. There, they saw the same kind of thing they had seen that night in Oakland.

Teamwork.

“If you think back to their press conferences after the game, it was all about Steve holding them accountable and I don’t think I heard one guy say, ‘I did this’ or ‘I did that,’” Olson said. “It was all about the teammates and how enjoyable it was to play with that team.”

Of course, Olson has known for decades that Kerr could build that sort of chemistry, having watched Kerr take on a leadership role for his groundbreaking Wildcat teams of the late 1980s.

“Once he ended up in the starting lineup as a sophomore, there was no question he was my extension on the court,” Olson said. “He was a guy who could get the most out of people. I still remember a couple of times where Steve would come up and grab (former UA forward) Tom Tolbert by the jersey. Tom still laughs about that.”

Tolbert went on to a seven-year NBA career and, perhaps fittingly, is now a Bay area sports talk show host and analyst for the Warriors games. He’s only one of several other UA connections to what Kerr jokingly called the “Golden State Wildcats” earlier this season, with former UA players Luke Walton and Bruce Fraser working as assistant coaches.

Then, of course, there’s Andre Iguodala, the MVP of the Finals who played for the Wildcats between 2002-04, leaving after two seasons to become a lottery pick and Olympian.

In what may have been a full-Wildcat-circle kind of move, Iguodala agreed to come off the bench this season at Kerr’s request, exactly 12 years after he came off the bench for the Wildcats as a highly touted freshman in part so that Walton could remain in the starting lineup.

“When Andre came to Arizona, I had individual meetings with the guys, and he said he really wanted to be like Luke,” Olson said. “Luke was his hero. He said, ‘I want to be able to get other people the ball.’ Luke was such a great passer and very unselfish. And, really, that’s what Andre ended up being.”

http://tucson.com/sports/basketball/col ... 5a811.html