He'd loved how that system used Bulls forwards and centers as passers, perfect for Bogut, David Lee and others. He envisions elements from Phil Jackson's triangle, which called for passing from all five players. In Kerr's mind, it's both simple and radically complex. And it's here, with the preseason a few weeks away, that Kerr begins outlining the plan for his staff, the one that's been marinating throughout his career and began to fully ripen on that Vino Volo charcuterie board. Coaches exchange ideas, watch hours of film - four sessions of three to four hours each. The mood is light, but everyone understands the scope of this task. There's a croquet tournament that Gentry, now a Warriors assistant, will win (proclaiming, in the aftermath, "I'm the greatest black croquet player ever!" before stripping off his shirt and pouring Perrier over everybody). And so for 10 minutes, Ninkovich watches as Kerr lays the foundation for the most devastating offense the NBA has not yet seen - if only he could somehow turn the league's worst passing team into its best.įOUR WEEKS LATER, the Warriors' new coaches are convening at a Napa Valley resort for a three-day meet-and-greet. But he hasn't yet begun to diagram plays, or the scheme itself. These ideas have, for weeks, been rattling around Kerr's head. He notes that the Warriors would be foolish to run the triangle exclusively it wouldn't best utilize their outside shooters. But then Kerr pulls back, giving the noshes a breather. These, Kerr explains, are aspects of the triangle offense, which he played in during the Bulls' 1990s heyday. Thompson and Curry set picks for each other along the perimeter, while Bogut weighs his options: find open almonds or back down his helpless cranberry. Suddenly, Almond Stephen Curry, hovering near the top of the key, swings an imaginary ball to Almond Klay Thompson on the wing, then cuts to the near corner while Thompson dumps it down to Almond Andrew Bogut. He positions the board's dried cranberries and marcona almonds into two five-on-five teams in a half-court setting, with the cranberries relegated to defense. Here, I'll show you."Īnd then, as Fraser looks on, Kerr swipes clear the wooden board, casting the handle in the role of a basket. "Funny you should mention that," Kerr replies. Will our one-on-one offense end? Will you implement the triangle offense? So Ninkovich, with a captive audience of Warriors coaches, musters the courage to speak: What are you going to do? He asks Kerr. All they need, Gentry thought then, is the right scheme.Īll they need, Ninkovich thinks now, as he delivers the charcuterie board, is the right scheme. Personnel-wise, they reminded Gentry of the mid-2000s Suns, an offensive powerhouse led by point guard Steve Nash: Golden State had the dynamic point guard, the lethal perimeter scorers, the forwards who could pass, the high-IQ playmakers. When those Warriors fell in the first round to the Clippers, Alvin Gentry, then a Clippers assistant, was left wondering why the Warriors played so much one-on-one, isolation basketball. Jackson's Warriors had won 51 games the season before but had averaged just 247 passes per game - not merely the worst mark in the NBA that season but 15 fewer than the next-closest team. Ninkovich loved how that team moved the ball and is no fan of the scheme installed by Kerr's predecessor, Mark Jackson. Ninkovich's fandom stretches back to the 1990s' "Run TMC" era, when Tim Hardaway, Mitch Richmond and Chris Mullin were the NBA's highest-scoring trio. Ninkovich is not about to let this chance slip away.Īfter another staffer takes their order - two glasses of pinot noir and a three-meat, three-cheese charcuterie board - Ninkovich preps it and bounds out of the kitchen, armed with an agenda. Now here the man is, the Warriors' new coach, named to the position just 10 weeks prior, sitting alongside his old college teammate and newly named assistant Bruce Fraser. Growing up as a 5-foot-and-change guard, he even imagined himself as Kerr: a deadeye who lacked physical gifts but could drill a title-sealing trey if called upon. Ninkovich, a 28-year-old bartender at Vino Volo, is a Warriors obsessive. Seconds later, back in the kitchen, Kevin Ninkovich hears a shout from a colleague on the floor: Steve Kerr just sat down. on a Friday in early August 2014 when two middle-aged men - both conspicuously tall, both with the loping grace of ex-athletes - commandeer chairs at the end of Vino Volo's five-person bar. It's called Vino Volo, Italian for "wine flight," and it offers some 200 labels of the former, in advance of the aggravations of the latter. The sanctuary for the early check-ins, the merely laid-over and the maddeningly delayed is tucked between Gates 25 and 26 in Terminal 2 at Oakland International Airport. This story appears in ESPN The Magazine's Oct.
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