The Golden State Warriors’ run of dominance in the 2010s produced three NBA championships, but one particular team stands out to Steve Kerr.
In an interview this week reliving the 2017 NBA Finals with Wes Goldberg of The Mercury News, the Warriors head coach said that the team was at their best that year, which was their first with superstar forward Kevin Durant.
“The combination of talent, two-way abilities with having so many players capable of playing both ends of the floor and the motivation that came with losing in the Finals the year before and the motivation for Kevin to win his first championship — it was all in the mix,” said Kerr. “It was brand new for him and so, as a group, we were so fresh and excited to be there. There were no distractions. It was just us playing basketball.”
When then asked if that 2017 team was the best Warriors squad that he had coached, Kerr replied, “Yeah. No question.”
Coming off a 2015-16 season where their NBA record 73 regular season wins was overshadowed by the 3-1 lead that they blew in the 2016 Finals, the Dubs with newcomer Durant won another 67 games during the season. They then blazed through the Western Conference playoffs without losing a single game and beat a Cavs team with a record-setting offense that year in just five games.
Durant was already talking about how truly special the team was even before winning the title, and it’s clear that 2017 squad will go down as an all-timer.
