Lowell Cohn: Warriors’ redemption must begin with Steve Kerr

OAKLAND - This is a fantastic opportunity for the Golden State Warriors. No irony intended. Fantastic opportunity.

But first, let's discuss coach Steve Kerr. He is an excellent coach especially when you consider he's only a second-year coach and won the championship his rookie go-round. He is a likable, decent man and he's helped put together an excellent team of equally likable men who play exciting, dramatic basketball.

No one ever criticizes Kerr. There was nothing to criticize. Until now. He coached the pants off every coach in the NBA. And he did it with good humor, always generous to the opponent and the media.

Now there are things to question. We're not out to eviscerate Kerr here. Merely asking questions, pointing things out.

The Thunder's Billy Donovan, a rookie coach in the NBA but a man with vast college experience - more cumulative experience than Kerr - is outcoaching Kerr. Don't be sore at me for writing that. When I point out a shortcoming in Kerr or, heaven forbid, Stephen Curry, I feel I'm blaspheming saints.

Donovan made the key adjustment in this series, went small, moved his “small” forward Kevin Durant to the power forward position so he would guard Draymond Green. Durant has taken Green out of the series and - more blasphemy here - driven Green out of his skull and reduced him to a crotch-kicking maniac.

Kerr has not matched Donovan's move. We know Kerr can make critical changes in his lineup. He certainly made two key adjustments in last year's playoffs. Against Memphis in Game 4, he chose not to guard Tony Allen and won the next three games and moved on.

Against Cleveland in Game 4, he started Andre Iguodala instead of Andrew Bogut, moved Draymond Green to center and won the next three games and the championship.

So far, he's done nothing. Maybe he has nothing to do, nothing to match Donovan's small lineup. But Donovan surely took Kerr's bishop and knight, and Kerr is still at the pawn level.

After losses, you hear the same litany of basketball sins from Kerr. He explains - complains? - that his players play dumb basketball. They make careless passes. They don't protect the ball. They take shots too early in the 24-second clock.

Listen to what he said on Wednesday at the Warriors gym about guarding - or not guarding - Thunder guard Andre Roberson, a so-called non-scorer who scored 17 points Tuesday night.

“He hurt us. We were very, very careless roaming off of him. The tape showed a glaring deficiency defensively accounting for him. It's one thing to play off a guy. It's another thing to forget about him. We were forgetting about him and that can't happen.”

Or listen to Kerr on his team's 21 turnovers. “(Tuesday) night was inexplicable. They forced some (turnovers) but the vast majority were just silly passes through traffic, trying to go over the top, lazy passes. We were not prepared to play last night.”

Kerr admitted he didn't get his team ready. And he's right to take blame. He's the coach. He's supposed to get the Warriors to guard Roberson, to make smart passes, to protect the ball, to take shots at the appropriate time. When Kerr complains about that failing to do that stuff, he's complaining about himself.

Kerr has the highest standards of play. That we know. But does he impose those standards on his players? Not in this series. Not so far.

I guess I'm asking a question. Is nice-guy Steve Kerr too nice with his players at this crisis moment?

But I promised you a positive column, wrote earlier about a fantastic opportunity for the Warriors. And I meant it. This is a chance for the Warriors, down 3-1 and on the brink, to redeem themselves.

The words “redeem” and “redemption” have a religious connotation in our culture. I don't mean that kind of redemption. I looked up “redeem” in my dictionary and got this: to buy back, repurchase.

Clearly not appropriate. The second definition was on the money: to get or win back; to free from what distresses or harms.

The Warriors sure want to “win back” and they certainly want to relieve distress. They need to do the redeeming in Game 5 or there will be no redeeming left. And here's the good part.

The Warriors may just redeem themselves. In the regular season, they were the best team in the league. Fact. They have risen to every challenge until now. Fact. They have the league MVP, a two-time MVP. Fact. Fact. They are strong-willed and resourceful and very good. Fact. Fact. Fact.

Here is Kerr on potentially coming back in the series: “We're home. We have a chance to regroup and, if we can do what we've done for two seasons which is protect our home floor, then we're at 3-2 and we have momentum. After Game 1, we knew we'd have three shots to win on their home floor. We failed the first two times. We just want to give ourselves one more try. Series can change quickly. You get down 3-1 but you have two of the three at home, that's a lot different than two of the three on the road.”

This is the perfect chance for the Warriors to show their greatness. Demonstrate it to the world. What a storyline. Down 3-1 and floundering, the Warriors rise up. Play like these conference finals are three one-game series. One at a time. Win Game 5 in Oakland, and live to play Game 6 in OKC, and win that game and force a Game 7 at home, pressure dripping from the Thunder's pores. And the Warriors win and repeat as champs.

“(The Thunder) want what we have,” Kerr said. “We have a banner hanging up in here and we take great pride in that and they're coming after us. We've got to stand up to that.”

Can the Warriors stand up? Can Kerr make them stand? Kerr is saying, yes, yes, yes. His narrative is one of redemption. His narrative leads to a glorious, pride-thumping, magnificent conclusion. Or it doesn't.

For more on the world of sports in general and the Bay Area in particular, go to the Cohn Zohn at cohn.blogs.pressdemocrat.com. You can reach staff columnist Lowell Cohn at lowell.cohn@pressdemocrat.com.