FluxBlog

The Golden State Warriors faced the Charlotte Hornets in the sixth game of that infamous 15-50 campaign a couple of seasons back. Stephen Curry, Draymond Green, Klay Thompson and D’Angelo Russell were all out with injuries. The Warriors entered the night 1-4. But they were in position, down just one point with 14.7 seconds left, to steal away a needed win. Steve Kerr wanted it for his young wobbling team.

Advertisement

Terry Rozier went to the line for Charlotte. Kerr wanted better spacing for the upcoming offensive possession. So he subbed in then rookie Jordan Poole for Willie Cauley-Stein, his starting center, leaving Eric Paschall and Glenn Robinson III as his low man on the free-throw rebound. Rozier missed. Golden State failed to secure the defensive rebound. They fouled Charlotte again. Kerr stayed small. They failed to get another free-throw rebound. They lost. Kerr fumed.

“I went down the tunnel and I remember I booted a basketball in our practice facility,” Kerr said. “I was so angry.”

Mike Brown saw Kerr kick it. He empathized with the frustration. He’d been there. Kerr hadn’t. Before that season, Kerr never had to claw for every regular-season win and agonize over the smallest of late-game details.

“Mike pulled me aside afterward,” Kerr said. “He was like, ‘I’ve been there. We all go through that as head coaches. The end of the game doesn’t go well. You’ll be better because of it. Go home and think about what you would’ve done differently. Then let’s prepare as a team for when it happens again.’

“He just encouraged me, like, ‘You’ve never coached a bad team before.’ That’s what he said, ‘You’ve never been in this situation. So you have to go the extra step to really hash out everything with full awareness it may not work out. But it’ll make you a better coach because it’ll make you think about more things.’ He was right.”

Kerr is in the early days of his ninth season as an NBA head coach. For six of them, he had Brown beside him in the cockpit. If Brown desired, Kerr said, Brown would have a lifetime job as Kerr’s lead assistant, calling them an “odd couple” who were perfect for each other.

“He’d always talk about how much he loved this job,” Kerr said. “That’s always what we’d lean on if he didn’t get an interview somewhere. Like, ‘You’ve got a pretty good gig. I’ve got it good. You’ve got it good. We’ll just keep it going.’ But we both felt like he was too talented and too young not to get another chance.”

Advertisement

Brown interviewed for the LA Clippers head coaching position a couple of years ago and didn’t get it. He interviewed for the Sacramento Kings job this past summer and was hired. This Sunday, Brown and Kerr will face each other for the first time as NBA head coaches.

“When this came about last year, it was kind of bittersweet,” Kerr said. “Like, ‘Hell yeah, Mike deserves it!’ Then, like, ‘Shit, I’m going to miss him.’”

Kerr first met Brown in San Antonio. Kerr was clinging to the final days of a 15-year NBA career. He was 37. Brown was 32, a midlevel assistant coach on Gregg Popovich’s staff.

“We hit it off,” Kerr said. “I would play one-on-one with Mike post-practice, pregame, as part of my routine. We’d play a one-on-one game to five. It was fun. I wasn’t playing a whole lot. It gave me a chance to work on my game a little bit, mess around, have fun. Mike was a defensive specialist. Not a shooter. Great sense of humor. We had a ton of fun. Really active. One of those high-energy workout guys at 32, all over the floor.”

Kerr retired. Brown rose up the coaching ranks, eventually securing his first head coaching job in Cleveland at 35. Kerr was hired by TNT. The Cavaliers were a regular part of the national broadcasting schedule.

“Since they had LeBron, I was doing a lot of their games,” Kerr said. “We’d visit every time I did a Cleveland game. We stayed in touch.”

Brown bounced from Cleveland to the Los Angeles Lakers and back to Cleveland before stepping away from coaching for a couple of years. His hiatus coincided with Kerr’s arrival into the head coaching ranks. Luke Walton was Kerr’s lead assistant during his first two seasons with the Warriors. Because it went so well — an NBA title followed by a record 73 wins — the Lakers hired Walton away before their second season together had concluded.

Advertisement

While the Warriors were in the middle of that legendary seven-game NBA Finals against the Cavaliers in 2016, Kerr was in search of a new lead assistant. He called Popovich. Brown, during his downtime, had spent some of his days around the Spurs as a part-time consultant.

“I called Pop and said, ‘I don’t know what your plans are for Mike, but if you’re going to hire him, I won’t get in your way. But if you’re not, I’d love to hire him full time,’” Kerr said. “Pop just told me, ‘We’re not making any changes on our staff and I could not give you a higher recommendation. Mike is fantastic. You should hire him. Right away. He’s the guy.’ Pop and I have the type of relationship where I know he’s not bullshitting. He wasn’t just trying to get a friend a job.”

Kerr and Brown met up at The Ritz-Carlton in Cleveland during a finals off-day. Brown came in on crutches. He’d just been in a scary grease fire at his house that had burned parts of his legs and arms. But it didn’t stop the two from a lively conversation that sealed an eventual six-year partnership.

“I would refer to us as Oscar and Felix, the old Odd Couple show that everyone your age doesn’t know,” Kerr said. “It’s an iconic show from my childhood. We are opposites. Mike is super organized. His locker is pristine. He has different colored pens for different coverages. He writes everything out.

“I’m more fly-by-the-seat-of-my-pants. I needed him. I needed that organization. I needed it from Mike and I now need it from Jama (Mahlalela). Jama is similar to Mike. He’s really clear thinking but has to lay everything out in front of him.”

Brown arrived the same season as Kevin Durant. Durant’s entire career had been spent in a buttoned-up Oklahoma City Thunder organization. Both Brown and Thunder general manager Sam Presti grew up professionally in the San Antonio culture. That was their preferred mode of operation.

Brown and Durant spent those early days laughing with each other about the foreign NBA world they’d entered. Music at practice. Beers in the postgame locker room. Media members roaming all over the place. Interviews happening freely. Kerr calling off practices so his guys could golf, rest or just decompress — get-what-you-need days, Kerr calls them.

Advertisement

That was new to Brown, a detail-obsessed gym junkie who, as a young coach, took his teams through drill-heavy, hours-long practices at every opportunity. Early with Kerr, he learned the benefit of playing the long game, manipulating the calendar, throttling back when necessary.

“I didn’t call any plays that first year Mike was here,” Kerr said. “We were so good. I’d hardly ever call a play. I just sat on the bench. I learned from Phil Jackson. You got a good team, let them go in the game. Coach them in practice. I hardly ever stood up. Hardly ever called anything. It was weird for him. He’d be like, ‘Aren’t you going to call anything?’ I’m like, ‘No.’”

Brown has referenced this calmer approach several times since joining the Kings as a wiser, older head coach, mentioning his preference to become a little more like Jackson and Kerr sitting in their high chair and letting their operation unfold in front of them.

But there’s a time and place when you must grab a firmer hold of the steering wheel. Kerr’s first three seasons with Brown were those Durant teams, loaded with genius veterans like Andre Iguodala, Shaun Livingston and David West, creating a coaching comfort zone. Their fourth season was a whole lot different. That’s when Brown’s influence was needed on Kerr. He’d experienced far more head coaching situations.

“All of a sudden we get all the injuries and departures and we are bad,” Kerr said. “He’s like, ‘You better stand up and call plays.’ I’m like, ‘Oh, shit, you’re right.’ I had a few games where I’m just trying to let the guys go and he made a great point. They need your help. They’re not good enough to do it on their own.

“So I’m starting to coach more like Mike. I’m up more, quicker timeouts, quicker adjustments. It totally went against my nature. I hate that. I hate overcoaching. But what Mike and I achieved really balanced each other out. After a couple of years, I’d tell him every year, ‘As long as I’m here, you have a job with me. You’re perfect for me. I want you here forever.’ We always had a great balance in the way we saw the game, the way we saw coaching.”

Brown also was given hands-on experience captaining the ship Kerr cultivated. In their first season together, Kerr had to step away from the team during the first round of the playoffs to deal with lingering health issues related to a back surgery gone wrong.

Advertisement

Brown took over. He has since regularly referenced the Game 3 in Portland and the lack of panic he felt from the team after falling. This was a high-stress moment in his coaching career, but he learned how much easier it is to ride through turbulence when all the leaders, including himself, remain loose and confident. The Warriors went 11-0 in those playoffs with Brown in charge.

“It was a terrible time for me personally health-wise,” Kerr said. “Having to leave your team during the playoffs is a terrible feeling. But I had no choice, given where I was. But we knew the team was in really good hands. I think that’s one of the reasons Bob (Myers) felt comfortable hiring Mike in the first place. I had to take a leave of absence when Luke was there. There was a sense of comfort for all of us that Mike had been a head coach for a long time. It happened and he stepped in and did a phenomenal job.”

Brown was in control of the team’s rotation patterns. He had a color-coded spreadsheet to keep track of it. Kerr handed him full control of the team’s defense during this past title season and his accountability-driven approach has been credited by Green and Curry as a driving force in their late-dynasty defensive resurgence. He left his imprint on this golden era.

Since arriving in Sacramento, Brown has preached about the importance of organizational culture and connectedness. Before his first game against the Trail Blazers, he mentioned Popovich and Kerr as the two that taught him how much more goes into coaching than schemes and film work.

“He used to talk to me after I’d talk to the team,” Kerr said. “I’d see him and he’d be taking notes. I remember asking him one time what he was writing down. He’s like, ‘I need to do this better. I need to message better. You just made a couple of really good points and it clicked that these are the type of points I need to make when I’m messaging my own team.'”

When asked about Kerr, Brown always brings up Kerr’s message, saying he’s never seen a coach deliver the right words at the right moment any better.

“The same thing has happened in reverse,” Kerr said. “I feel like X’s and O’s defensively — I’d even say both ends — I really understand the chessboard better now because of Mike because that’s what Mike really studied. He was always the tactician, literally the X’s and O’s. He’s on his board constantly. I’d sit in with him and ask him why he’d do a certain thing and he’d say, ‘Well, if you send this guy over here, it isolates this guy and puts him in a tough spot defensively.’

Advertisement

“Stuff that I hadn’t really planted in my brain before is planted in my brain now because I worked with Mike. He taught me that. It’s kind of what you want. As a young coach, you want a staff that complements you, that fills up your weaknesses, someone who you can learn from but also you can teach. That’s why it was such a successful combination.”

Kerr has a favorite story during his time together with Brown. It came back in the pre-pandemic days when coaches were required to wear full suits during the game. Brown has a closet full of tailored looks, color-coded pocket squares and shoes that match.

“Mike was pushing the boundaries wearing these white tennis dress shoes,” Kerr said. “I think they were Gucci or something. He loves his shoes. Loves his shoe game. I hadn’t seen any other coach do that. I’m like, ‘Damn, Mike, you are pushing the envelope.’ He’s like, ‘You know, I gotta look good.’”

The Warriors like to play midseason pranks. This delivered a great opportunity.

“We got on the plane like a week later and had this whole thing set up,” Kerr said. “(PR man) Raymond (Ridder) had drawn up a fake fine letter with an NBA letterhead and everything, signed by like Mark Tatum. It said something like: ‘In accordance with Rule 3, Bylaw 2.1, you will be fined $25,000 for the shoes you wore on January 10th.’”

All the coaches were in on it and played dumb. Myers had even called Brown while he was at practice to leave an ominous voicemail about needing to discuss something with him. He listened to it before he boarded the plane to Salt Lake City.

“Then Raymond drops this FedEx package right in front of him with the fine,” Kerr said. “Mike is reading the whole thing. We’re all playing dumb. He stared at the letter for a minute, didn’t give it away. We get to Salt Lake. I see him in the elevator two hours later. He’s like, ‘I gotta tell you something.’ I’m still playing dumb. He’s like, ‘The league fined me for my shoes. But they said on January 10th. I didn’t wear those white shoes on January 10th.’ He’s the only guy in the league that’d remember which shoes he wore. He’s like, ‘On January 10th, I wore black shoes. I did not wear white shoes.’ That’s when I finally told him. It was one of our better pranks.”

Kerr has coached against Brown one time before. It came in the summer of 2021. Kerr was an assistant coach for the USA National Team. Brown was the head coach of the Nigeria men’s basketball team. They faced off in an exhibition in Las Vegas before the Olympics, and the Nigerian team pulled off a stunning upset.

Advertisement

“He had those guys ready,” Kerr said. “They made like 23 3s. It was impressive. I just remember walking to half court, shaking his hand and saying something like, ‘Now you’re definitely getting a head job and it’s pissing me off because you’re going to leave me now.’ That was a good example of Mike’s immediate imprint on a team. That team had been practicing in Oakland for two or three weeks. They were flying around, playing with so much energy. It felt like a Mike Brown team.”

Kerr said he sees that early with the Kings, believing from afar in a culture change that is in its infant days. He will get an up-close look at Chase Center on Sunday when Kerr and Brown square off in the NBA for the first time on opposite sidelines.

“I think it is a great spot for him,” Kerr said. “It’s a good young team that needs growth, needs a defensive mindset. He’s so good at that, injecting a team with defensive confidence and energy. It’s a team that has struggled for a long time, but I can see it now watching them play. He’s helping them build an identity. They have some pretty good young talent. It’s going to take more, but it’s a good situation where he can help them get to the next level.”

(Top photo of Mike Brown and Steve Kerr: Noah Graham / NBAE via Getty Images)

ncG1vNJzZmismJqutbTLnquim16YvK57knBob3BnZ3xzfJFrZmpoX2eAcLfEq6lmmqKkxK951pqpq6Gfp8But8innqxn