Golden State Warriors guard Stephen Curry (and head coach Steve Kerr in the fourth quarter during an NBA preseason game against the LA Clippers at Chase Center in San Francisco, Friday, Oct. 17, 2025.
Santiago Mejia/S.F. Chronicle
From left: Steve Kerr and Klay Thompson of the Golden State Warriors at practice, Saturday, Jan. 8, 2022, in San Francisco, Calif. Thompson is expected to play in an NBA game for the first time in more than two years.
Santiago Mejia/The Chronicle
Golden State Warriors’ Coach Steve Kerr greets Andre Iguodala in the second period during Game 1 of The NBA Finals on Thursday, June 4, 2015 in Oakland, Calif.
Scott Strazzante/S.F. Chronicle
Warriors head coach Steve Kerr reacts to a well wisher from the crowd during the NBA Coach of the Year press conference on Tuesday, April 26, 2016 in Oakland, California.
Lea Suzuki/S.F. Chronicle
Golden State Warriors head coach Steve Kerr agreed to a new two-year contract Saturday. His first 12 seasons with the Warriors have been eventful, to put it mildly — four NBA championships, six trips to the Finals and splashes of turbulence including missing the playoffs twice in the past three years.
Here are several defining moments during Kerr’s time in the Bay Area:
Lineup shuffle: Before Kerr even coached one game for the Warriors, before they flipped their futile history and became a sporting phenomenon, he needed to talk to Andre Iguodala.
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Iguodala was an All-Star and marquee defensive player before he joined Golden State in 2013. He started all 82 regular-season games five times in Philadelphia. Iguodala was not eager to relinquish his starting role with the Warriors, just as Stephen Curry and Co. were about to take off.
But Kerr, who shared an alma mater with Iguodala (Arizona), persuaded him to anchor the second unit alongside Shaun Livingston. Kerr committed to Harrison Barnes and Draymond Green as starters, with Iguodala and David Lee coming off the bench. The reshaped Warriors rolled to a 67-15 record and the West’s No. 1 seed.
Golden State Warriors head coach Steve Kerr talks to Andre Iguodala in the first quarter during Game 2 of the First Round of the Western Conference 2017 NBA Playoffs at Oracle Arena on Wednesday, April 19, 2017 in Oakland, Calif.
Carlos Avila Gonzalez/The Chronicle
Bad shot, bad shot … great shot! Late in Kerr’s first season, in a nationally televised game against the Clippers, Curry dribbled through four defenders, retreated behind the 3-point line and unleashed an ambitious, off-balance shot. Swish.
The broadcast caught Kerr standing on the sideline, aghast, arms spread wide in frustration as Curry launched the shot. Then, when the ball rippled through the net, Kerr turned away in a mix of shock and amusement.
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“I remember seeing Steph looking like Curly Neal of the Harlem Globetrotters, dribbling through traffic,” Kerr said years later. “Every coach I ever had in my life, their voice was in my head saying, ‘That’s a terrible shot.’
“What I eventually figured out is, it’s a great shot because it’s Steph Curry. So I finally realized Steph gets to shoot whenever he wants.”
That philosophy fueled a lot of wins over the past 12 seasons.
Finals adjustment: This time, Kerr shrewdly put Iguodala into the starting lineup.
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The Warriors trailed Cleveland, two games to one, in the 2015 NBA Finals. Iguodala was playing superbly off the bench, and he also was Golden State’s best defensive option against Cavaliers forward LeBron James.
Nick U’Ren, then 28 and a special assistant to Kerr, suggested swapping Iguodala for center Andrew Bogut. That allowed the Warriors to speed up the game, put Iguodala on James, move Green to center and lean on the “small ball” lineup that would come to torment the league.
The Warriors won the next three games to earn their first championship in 40 years, and Iguodala was named Finals MVP. Good move.
Back surgeries: Kerr ruptured a disk in his back during those ’15 Finals. That led to two surgeries in the summer, one to repair the injury and the second to address a spinal fluid leak causing headaches.
He took a leave of absence to recover and missed more than half of the 2015-16 season. Kerr’s top assistant, Luke Walton, took over as interim head coach and guided the Warriors to an NBA-record 24-0 start, which grew to 39-4 by the time Kerr returned in mid-January.
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Kerr and Walton both handled the potentially awkward situation with grace, allowing Golden State’s machine to keep humming along. The Warriors finished 73-9 to eclipse the previous record (72) for most wins in a season, set by the 1995-96 Chicago Bulls.
Warriors head coach Steve Kerr questions a referee about a foul call in the first half as the Golden State Warriors played the Atlanta Hawks at Oracle Arena in Oakland, Calif., on Monday, November 28, 2016.
Carlos Avila Gonzalez/The Chronicle
Halftime confrontation: On Feb. 27, 2016, in a game remembered mostly for Curry’s audacious, game-winning, 38-foot shot in Oklahoma City, Kerr and Green nearly came to blows in the locker room at halftime.
Kerr reportedly minimized Green’s first-half shooting, prompting him to say, “I know I can play. You have me messed up right now.” When Kerr told Green to sit down, he responded, “Motherf—er, come sit me down!”
Warriors players, including Curry and Klay Thompson, calmed Green and avoided further escalation. The incident became public knowledge because ESPN’s Lisa Salters, standing outside the locker room, heard the outburst and reported it on the air.
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Kerr subsequently called the whole thing “overblown,” but it came to encapsulate the occasionally fiery relationship between Kerr and Green.
Golden State Warriors head coach Steve Kerr and Draymond Green celebrate their NBA Western Conference Finals win over the Dallas Mavericks at the Chase Center in San Francisco, May 26, 2022.
Tom Fox/Dallas Morning News
Coach of the Year: For all the Warriors’ success under Kerr — highlighted by four championships and six Finals appearances — he earned NBA Coach of the Year honors only once.
And that happened when Walton pinch hit for more than half the season.
But it’s hard to overlook the head coach of a team with more regular-season wins than any other in league history. Kerr received 64 first-place votes in 2015-16, to beat out Portland’s Terry Stotts — now a Warriors assistant under Kerr — and San Antonio’s Gregg Popovich, one of Kerr’s mentors.
Go ahead, you coach: On Feb. 12, 2018, in a home game against overmatched Phoenix, Kerr became the opposite of the overbearing, control-freak coach. Instead, he happily relinquished control.
The Warriors were fighting complacency in their second of three seasons with Kevin Durant alongside Curry, Green and Thompson. The schedule had become a slog, with the All-Star break three days away.
So Kerr handed his clipboard to different players during timeout huddles — starting with Iguodala and later including Green — and stepped aside.
“They’re tired of my voice,” Kerr said after his team’s 129-83 win. “I’m tired of my voice. It’s been a long haul these last few years. I wasn’t reaching them, and we just figured it was probably a good night to pull a trick out of the hat and do something different.”
Curry off the bench: The Warriors returned to the playoffs in 2022, after two seasons of strangely watching from afar. But they wanted to be careful with Curry, who had missed the final three weeks of the regular season with a foot injury.
Kerr brought Curry off the bench in the first two games of Golden State’s first-round series against Denver, given his minutes limit. Many stars would have chafed at such an arrangement, but Curry acknowledged he trusted Kerr’s judgment, given how often the coach had been right over the years.
Then they agreed to stick with the same arrangement for the next two games as well, with Jordan Poole starting and Curry playing 30-plus minutes as a reserve. Kerr joked with Curry in practice, saying if he kept working hard he might start again one day.
Curry ran with the joke, responding, “Look at me, Coach! Look how hard I’m working.”
Impassioned plea: Later in the 2022 playoffs, before Game 4 of the Western Conference finals in Dallas, basketball suddenly was the last thing on Kerr’s mind.
Reacting to the Texas school shooting earlier in the day, Golden State Warriors’ head coach Steve Kerr bangs his fist on the table as he makes a passionate statement before Warriors play Dallas Mavericks in Game 4 of NBA Western Conference Finals at American Airlines Center in Dallas, Texas, on Tuesday, May 24, 2022.
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Earlier that day, a mass shooting at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas, left 19 students and two teachers dead. Kerr had long been outspoken against gun violence, inspired in part by his father’s 1984 assassination in Lebanon, and he frequently advocated for gun law reform.
The shooting in Uvalde brought out a more urgent tone. Kerr ripped into senators for refusing to vote on a measure requiring universal background checks.
“When are we going to do something?” he shouted during his pregame news conference, his voice quivering with emotion as he slammed his fist on the table. “I am so tired of getting up here and offering condolences to the devastated families out there. I am tired of the moments of silence. Enough!”
Bonus title: Kerr and the Warriors already had secured their legacy, with three championships and five Finals appearances in five years (2015-19). But then Golden State polished its place in history by rolling to another title in 2022.
This came after Durant departed three years earlier, giving the Curry/Thompson/Green core two championships on its own and two others with Durant. Curry led the charge, naturally, earning his first NBA Finals MVP award in propelling the Warriors past Boston.
Kerr deserves an assist for the way he managed the show — easing Curry into the mix after his injury, getting the most out of Andrew Wiggins and Jordan Poole and even benching Green at times during the postseason. Kerr again pulled the right levers.
Backyard meeting: Green found himself at a crossroads during the 2023-24 season. He earned a five-game suspension in November for putting Minnesota’s Rudy Gobert in a chokehold, then drew an indefinite suspension in December for wildly swinging his arm and hitting Phoenix’s Jusuf Nurkic in the face.
Two days later, before the Warriors played the Clippers, Kerr visited Green at his Los Angeles home. They sat in the backyard and talked for two hours, an emotional conversation in which they both cried at times.
“There’s a bond there — we’ve seen the highest of the highs and the lowest of the lows,” Green said later on his podcast. “He just said to me, ‘I want you to end this the right way. I want us to end this the right way. And you’re not doing that right now.’”
The conversation not only reflected Kerr’s connection with Green, but also perhaps his strongest asset as a coach: people skills.
Olympic triumph: Kerr and Curry gave the U.S. men’s national basketball team a distinctly Warriors flavor in August 2024, as the Americans memorably delivered their fifth consecutive gold medal at the Paris Olympics.
Kerr called his job as national-team coach “win or fail,” and he wasn’t wrong. The U.S. team was loaded, as usual, starting with Curry, Durant and James. Jayson Tatum, a first-team all-NBA selection with the Celtics, didn’t play at all in some Olympic games.
But Kerr massaged egos, juggled combinations and repeatedly showed his team video of the gold medal, to remind them of their sole objective. It worked, culminating in a stirring semifinal comeback against Serbia and a taut win over France in the title game.
“He gave us a lot of inspiration on staying locked in on the mission,” Curry said of Kerr.
The Golden State Warriors’ Stephen Curry, center, is honored during an Olympic gold medal recognition event by Warriors head coach Steve Kerr, left, and teammate Draymond Green before an NBA preseason game against the Sacramento Kings at Chase Center in San Francisco, Friday, Oct. 11, 2024.
Santiago Mejia/The Chronicle
Last act in a lost season: After sidestepping the topic all season, Kerr waded into his uncertain future once the Warriors absorbed a 111-94 loss to Phoenix in the NBA play-in tournament April 17.
Late in the game, he embraced Curry and Green on the sideline and told them, “I don’t know what’s going to happen next, but I love you guys to death.” Then Kerr came into his news conference and sounded curiously at peace, acknowledging all coaching jobs have an “expiration date.”
That might be true, but Kerr’s expiration date as Warriors coach remains in the distance.