Warriors' Steve Kerr answers critics with play-in upset over Clippers

Steve Kerr has won four championships with the Golden State Warriors and reached the NBA Finals six times. Yet he's faced a slew of criticism of his coaching this season as the injured Warriors slumped to a 37-win season.

On Wednesday, Kerr showed up his haters by leading his undermanned team to a 126-121 win over the Los Angeles Clippers, where the 60-year-old coach pushed all the right buttons late. From staying with Al Horford to drawing up solid plays after timeouts, Kerr showed he's still an elite coach.

Steve Kerr became the target of Warriors fan frustration

There are elements of Steve Kerr's coaching style that can frustrate observers. He prefers veteran players with basketball smarts who can play his system over raw young players. Kerr's system prioritizes motion and ball movement and mainly eschews the pick-and-roll, an approach he grudgingly adjusted for Jimmy Butler. Fans blamed Kerr for the stagnant development of 2021 lottery pick Jonathan Kuminga.

But scapegoating Kerr for Kuminga's failures to develop into a star ignores that injuries often took the young forward out of Golden State's rotation, not the head coach. In 2024-25, Kuminga was averaging over 30 minutes per game in December before a sprained ankle sidelined him for 31 games. He played 26.3 minutes per game at age 21 in 2023-24, hardly the numbers of a player who wasn't given a chance.

Even after his trade to the Atlanta Hawks, Kuminga missed 13 of the team's 29 games with various injuries. The same injury struggles derailed 2020's No. 2 pick, James Wiseman, who played only 39 games in his first two NBA seasons. Meanwhile, 2021 lottery pick Moses Moody was thriving before his knee injury, Brandin Podziemski was first team All-Rookie in 2023-24, and 23-year-old Gui Santos has become a solid rotation player despite being the 55th overall pick in 2022.

Draymond Green defended Steve Kerr on his podcast

On "The Draymond Green Show," the veteran Warriors forward spoke up for his coach, telling listeners, "You don’t want another coach in the foxhole with you. You don’t want another coach when your back is against the wall," and comparing Kerr to Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos.

"He always knows the right thing to do, he always knows the right thing to say, he always knows the right things to do and the right adjustments to make," Green concluded.

One of those moves was going with Horford late. The big man had struggled mightily in the first half but rewarded his coach with four three-pointers in the final quarter.