Warriors coach Steve Kerr bristles at LaVar Ball's Milli Vanilli reference

OAKLAND - The Kardashian of the NBA shot back at the Milli Vanilli of coaching. And the Milli Vanilli didn’t like it.

The Milli Vanilli of coaching is Warriors head coach Steve Kerr, according to LaVar Ball, the father of Los Angeles Lakers rookie point guard Lonzo Ball.

And the Kardashian of the NBA is LaVar Ball, according to Kerr. Those two nicknamed each other.

Ball gave Kerr his nickname on Sunday. Ball had just made his professional coaching debut in Lithuania for a team called Prienu Vytautas. Both of Ball’s youngest sons - LiAngelo Ball (19) and LaMelo Ball (16) - play for Vytautus. After the game, a reporter asked Ball if he called his own plays. Here’s what Ball said:

“Coaching is not hard. Anybody can be a coach. Look at Steve Kerr. He’s the Milli Vanilli of coaching. Which I mean is, you can go stand at the same spot (as Kerr) like Luke Walton did and win 20-something games when you got the right horses just running.

“Sometimes less coaching is the best coaching, but some of these guys like to act like they are really coaching someone to play. How do you coach KD, Steph Curry, Draymond Green and Klay Thompson? You know how you coach them? You don’t. Turn your back and let them do what they do.

“As soon as they win a championship, everybody said, ‘Oh, (Kerr)’s a great coach.’ That team was put together by Mark Jackson. And now (Kerr) jumped up and tried to take all the credit. That’s why I’m calling him the Milli Vanilli of coaching.”

Milli Vanilli was an R&B group in the late 1980s. Their album “Girl You Know It’s True” sold more than 6 million records in 1989. But, both members of the group - Fab Morvan and Rob Pilatus - didn’t really sing. They lip synced. And they accidentally exposed themselves during a live performance on MTV when a CD playing their voices started skipping.

Ball was calling Kerr a phony coach. He meant anyone could coach the Warriors and be successful. Luke Walton won 39 games and lost only four when he coached the Warriors two seasons ago while Kerr was out with a spinal leak.

Walton has not been successful since he left the Warriors. His winning percentage with the Lakers is .344. But, his winning percentage with the Warriors (.907) was higher than Kerr’s, which currently is .834.

Ball’s comments didn’t come out of nowhere. Kerr attacked Ball before Ball attacked him. On Jan. 8, Kerr criticized Ball at a pregame press conference. A reporter mentioned to Kerr that Ball had accused Walton of losing the Lakers locker room. Walton was on Kerr’s coaching staff from 2014 to 2016 and they are friends.

“I’ve talked to people in the media this year,” Kerr said. “I said, ‘Why do you guys have to cover (LaVar Ball)?’ They say, ‘Well, we don’t want to. Nobody wants to, but our bosses tell us we have to because of the rating, because of the readership.’

“Somewhere, LaVar Ball is laughing at all of us. People are eating out of his hands for no apparent reason other than he has become like the Kardashian of the NBA or something. And that sells. That’s what is true in politics and entertainment and now in sports. It doesn’t matter if there’s any substance involved with an issue. It’s just, ‘Can we make it really interesting for no apparent reason?’ There’s nothing interesting about that story.”

Monday, Kerr spoke with reporters after practice. As he walked toward the group, one reporter said to Kerr, “Did you hear he called you Milli Vanilli?”

“I did, I did,” Kerr said as he sat down. Then, he looked at another reporter and asked playfully, “You have some music for me?”

“I do,” the reporter said. “I’ll play it after the press conference. It’s ‘Blame it on the Rain.’?”

That was Milli Vanilli’s second-biggest hit.

“Oh, nice,” Kerr said, and he smiled. He seemed amused.

The second reporter continued, asking about Ball’s recent comments. Kerr stopped smiling. He was not amused with the topic, wanted to move past it.

“I’m not talking about that,” he decreed. “I want to talk about basketball. Who wants to talk basketball?”

Kerr turned his face away from the reporter.

Ten feet from Kerr, forward Andre Iguodala sat in a chair talking to a smaller group of reporters.

“LaVar is smart marketing-wise because we keep talking about him,” Iguodala said, and he shrugged his shoulders. “I like LaVar. That’s my man.”