WARRIORS PRACTICE FACILITY, OAKLAND, CA — Day Two of Golden State Warriors training camp got started with another friendly visit from Jerry West, the team’s special adviser.
[TRAINING CAMP DAY ONE SIGHTS, SOUNDS, AND LINKS]He was busy explaining the nuances of posting up and spinning baseline to Chris DeMarco, one of the Warriors’ advance scouts, as all the players continued with their shootarounds:
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First up in the media gaggle was head coach Steve Kerr. The next day, it would be announced that he would take a leave of absence to deal with his back, which underwent two surgeries during the off-season, but on this day, no one could tell that he might not have been 100%.
In fact, Kerr was almost beaming when asked about Stephen Curry and any room for improvement. Kerr said no, and mentioned how Curry had hit “five impossible shots in a row” earlier in scrimmage:
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UEc1h2v5Fn8&w=560&h=315]“But that’s not better than last year,” said Kerr in answering “no” to that question of improving.
Some more interesting quotes from Kerr:
- “Everything we do lends itself to conditioning. I never put them on the line and have them run sprints. All of our drill work has running involved.”
- When West shows up to practice, Kerr said he talks to West about his observation on players.
- We pretty much told the players, “Come back whenever you want. Don’t feel like you have to be here by Labor Day (because of the long season).”
- “Shaun (Livingston) looks great. He’s in very good condition…there’s just a deeper level of confidence with him.”
Rusty Simmons of the San Francisco Chronicle asked Kerr who’s looked good so far:
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“He looks really spry,” Kerr added about Iguodala, “but I think some of that is just confidence in what we’re doing.”
Meanwhile, former Los Angeles Lakers player Kareem Rush was in the building to report for MuHo TV and he got the opportunity to interview his former teammate, Warriors assistant coach Luke Walton:
#Warriors asst coach Luke Walton gets interviewed today after practice… #StephCurry pic.twitter.com/nCCyDaGZk8
— LetsGoWarriors (@LetsGoWarriors) September 30, 2015
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Draymond Green was up next and talked about how roles always change in the NBA. When asked about his particular role from last year to this, he chuckled when recalling how he was a bit of a ballhog (“I took two shots the first two plays”) and how Kerr yelled at him last year.
“I don’t give him nothing to yell at me about anymore,” said Green.
Meanwhile, Stephen Curry was doing more jab cuts in his shootaround:
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We’ll have a report on these specifics soon.
Green then gave his “non-67-game diatribe” that you would expect when asked about expectations.
“We’re not trying to top last year’s win total…(Is that the) third best record of all time?” quipped Green, setting up the perspective.
When the reporter confirmed, Green smiled, “Look at you,” reinforcing the notion that the Warriors don’t pay attention to goal-setting by numbers, as is often the case with media as well as fans.
“If it happens, great, but that’s not our goal going into the season. That’s really hard to do. To expect that may be a bit much.”
The subject of Walton taking over for Alvin Gentry was brought up and Green responded, “(Luke)’s just super-smart…It’s great to pick his brains sometimes…He’s just a brilliant basketball mind. It’s one of those things that you just can’t teach.
“You may be thinking of something everybody else may not see, but if you go and talk, he know exactly what you’re talking about,” Green said, indicating his own personal connection to Walton.
Green also added that it would be disrespectful to Gentry to say that there wasn’t a difference with the Warriors in his absence, deftly changing the perspective once again to teach and drive home his point.
Asked about Curry’s improvement, ironically Green thought Curry would improve in all aspects — after Kerr had just said “nothing” — including pace. The MVP has been staying hard at work. When Green walked out of the gym at 9:30PM last night, Curry was walking in.
Green gave a shout out to Festus Ezeli as well.
“It’s his first summer healthy,” Green said. “I’m excited for him. I wouldn’t necessarily say I’m ‘excited to see (him do something this year)’,” going back to his mantra of staying away from hard expectations and focusing on the fact that Ezeli is finally healthy to start a new season.
In the backdrop we saw the yellow-jerseyed Ezeli getting some post-up work done against trainer Theo Robertson:
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After Green was done, Curry talked about how he expects to improve this season.
Here was another view from practice:
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(Photo: @letsgowarriors Instagram account via @warriors)
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