<![CDATA[Recapping The Day The Golden State Warriors Hired Steve Kerr (Photo: @letsgowarriors Instagram account via Dunk360.com)
This is how things were reported yesterday as Steve Kerr was named the new head coach of the Golden State Warriors. If you already know all of this, congratulations, you are following the right people on Twitter. For those who missed out on some of the context, let’s get you caught up.
David Aldridge of NBA.com and TNT broke the story. At precisely 5:12PM on Wednesday, May 14th, 2014, he tweeted the following:
Stunner: Steve Kerr spurns the Knicks, accepts Warriors' head coach job. Story coming on http://t.co/tv9kc59jsI.
— David Aldridge (@daldridgetnt) May 15, 2014
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Exactly seven minutes later, Yahoo’s Adrian Wojnarowski, who is often times the one to break NBA stories, tweeted that a source told him Kerr had agreed to a five-year, $25 million contract with the Warriors.
This was just over two-and-half-hours after he broke a story saying that the New York Knicks had added a fourth year to Kerr’s offer.
Shortly after Wojnarowski’s report, his colleague at Yahoo, Marc Spears reported on Twitter that Warriors owner Joe Lacob had texted a few quotables after Golden State’s brass Bob Myers, Jerry West, Travis Schlenk, and Kirk Lacob (and, according to Aldridge, Rick Welts) met with Kerr in Oklahoma City, where Kerr had been working a playoff game for TNT.
“We love Kerr. Incredibly prepared. We got him because of our players. The Golden State Warriors’ future is bright,” Lacob wrote to Spears, “Bob and Steve are going to be fantastic. I’m ecstatic.”
Lacob also added that Kerr is a “great organizational fit” and, “Very bright. Very personable. Very, very prepared. I have always liked him…but he sold our group. Bob, Jerry, loved him.”
Shortly after that, Tim Kawakami, also of the Bay Area News Group, tweeted that he had talked to Kerr on the phone and would soon go home to write up the transcript.
“What helped is that I have previous relationships with Joe and Kirk and definitely Bob,” Kerr told Kawakami, “Bob and I have known each other for years–he was Robin Lopez’s agent; I drafted Robin in Phoenix, so we spent some time together then. So I knew Bob. And I’ve known Joe actually a long time through a mutual friend, a venture capitalist in the Bay Area. So we’ve been on golf trips together.”
Later that evening, Sam Amick of USA Today posted his interview with Lacob, which revealed exactly how the deal went down, including Lacob’s penchant to look at resources well expended as a good return on investment:
According to Lacob, he, general manager Bob Myers, assistant general manager Travis Schlenk and assistant general manager and Lacob’s son, Kirk Lacob, were visiting with Van Gundy in Orlando, Fla. on Monday night when their fluid situation changed yet again. Van Gundy already had an offer from the Pistons, and his desire to have roster control was clearly not something that the Warriors group was willing to yield.
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“We did not make (Van Gundy) an offer; he already had a big offer,” Lacob said. “But we met him, and it was theoretically still open. And then we got wind when we were there that maybe there was an opening on the Kerr front, and so — you know — we fired up the jet, used the jet fuel and got him.”
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“Look, when we decide we’re going to do something…we get it done, whether it’s a new arena or whether it’s a coach or whether it’s a key free agent,” Lacob said. “I think we’ve proven that. We keep getting doubters but we seem to always get it done.”
Aldridge filed his report later in the evening:
“It just felt like the right move on many levels,” Kerr said by phone Wednesday. “They have a good young team. The location is ideal. My daughter goes to Cal and plays volleyball. My oldest son is in college in San Diego and our youngest is a junior in high school. It’s just a short flight for them.”
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Kerr said it was “agonizing” the last couple of weeks. Despite the speculation since
before the end of the regular season that Kerr would take the New York job, his representatives have only been in talks with the Knicks the last two and a half weeks.
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“It was so tantalizing on many levels,” Kerr said. “Number one, Phil Jackson. Number two, the Knicks are a flagship franchise, one of the great franchises in the league. The last two weeks have been agonizing, in talking with Phil and (general manager) Steve Mills. They’ve got really good people there and I do think they’re going to get it turned around there. The Knicks could not have been better in giving me the space to make a decision, especially when I had a game to do every other night.”
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“I told Phil, ‘I think I have to pursue this other opportunity,’ Kerr said. “He gave me his blessing. He said go look at it, and do what was in my heart.”
This morning, ESPN.com’s Marc Stein, ESPN.com’s Ramona Shelburne, ESPNNewYork.com’s Ian Begley, ESPNNewYork.com’s Ian O’Connor and The Associated Press had these quotes from Kerr’s camp:
Kerr was represented in negotiations by Priority Sports’ Mike Tannenbaum, former general manager of the New York Jets.
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“It just came down to a personal decision,” said Priority CEO Mark Bartelstein, who served as Kerr’s agent throughout his playing career. “These are two great jobs. There were no problems with the Knicks. This was not about what the Knicks did or didn’t do. This was about Steve, in his heart, deciding that Golden State was a better fit right now for him and his family. Phil was great. First class in every way.”
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“It was a long process, and Steve went through a lot of different feelings,” Tannenbaum said. “And there wasn’t any magical moment where he made the decision. The more he thought about it, the more he just felt that everything about Golden State felt right to him.”
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