NBA teams
Ramona Shelburne, ESPN Senior Writer 9y

Kerr, Fisher take divergent paths

NBA, Golden State Warriors, New York Knicks

We'd all like to think we know who we are and what we believe in. That deep down at our core there's a center and a compass that guides us. Rules we try to live by that never change, no matter the situation.

But consider the paths Steve Kerr and Derek Fisher have taken these past six months. The doors that opened to them and the ones they chose to walk through have largely determined the way they are being judged as NBA head coaches.

Kerr is a resounding success in Golden State. He got off to a 21-2 start -- the best start ever for a rookie head coach in the NBA. Meanwhile, Fisher has presided over the worst start in New York Knicks history at 5-22.

Kerr is being hailed as a natural, Fisher as a flop. Kerr is cheered for his deft touch with a group of players who had been fiercely loyal to Mark Jackson, his popular predecessor. Fisher is taking criticism for not being flexible with a group of players who seem to have little appetite for the new culture and offense he and Phil Jackson are trying to instill.

Kerr has found his voice, Fisher is still searching for his whistle.

But go back to this spring when Kerr was one signature away from being the Knicks' head coach. If Stan Van Gundy, who was Golden State's top choice, doesn't get that big offer to run the Detroit Pistons, Kerr's signature is probably on that unsigned contract.

If he takes the Knicks job, he's the one trying to cajole this pitiful Knicks roster into running the triangle offense the right way.

Deep down, though, Kerr always preferred the Golden State job. His family is in California, he loved the Warriors' roster and, while he believes in the triangle offense, Phil Jackson isn't his only basketball mentor. He played for Gregg Popovich and Cotton Fitzsimmons, and worked alongside Mike D'Antoni, too.

His vision of an NBA offense, the one he has brought to Golden State, draws on all of those muses.

"It's sort of a hybrid," Kerr said of the Warriors' offense, which ranks sixth in the league in offensive efficiency. "We run some Phoenix stuff that Alvin [Gentry] brought with him. I've obviously been influenced by Pop and Phil, so we run some San Antonio stuff and some triangle concepts. We don't run the triangle, but we run some concepts out of it -- pinch-post action, corner screen-and-roll.

"It's just sort of our own style that's come from a lot of ideas and places. We still pick up things throughout the season. We see someone run something and we think, 'That'll work well.' We just try to play in a style that suits our personnel."

The Warriors did try to run more of the triangle during summer league. But after a while, the coaching staff felt it best to pick and choose the parts that fit their team.

If Kerr had taken the Knicks job, would he have been able to do that?

"I don't think about it anymore," Kerr said. "That was something I had to give a lot of thought to over the summer. But once I made my decision to come here I didn't look back. I had a good feel for the team already. I did a lot of the Warriors games the last few years for TNT. When I took the job, our staff put our heads together and decided this would be the best way to play."

The Warriors didn't need a culture change. They won 51 games last season. Kerr's challenge was in getting the players to accept and respect him when they never really wanted a new coach in the first place. So Kerr called his team leaders over the summer and asked their opinions of what could make the team better.

"He gives us a voice," forward Draymond Green said. "He asks us what we think. I think that's the sign of a great coach. Every coach that I've played for, they'll ask you what you see on the court. Sometimes you can see on the court what you can't see from the sidelines."

After Kerr chose the Warriors, Jackson quickly moved on to Fisher, who had his own decision to make: He wasn't entirely sure he was done with his playing career yet.

Before this season, he said the chances he'd still be playing would be pretty high if the opportunity to coach the Knicks hadn't come up.

"Maybe 75 percent that I'd be playing without this type of opportunity," he said. "But that's what life is. We have these plans and these schedules and times when we want to do things, and sometimes good or bad things come up that change things and it's like, 'Let's go.'

"You try to just make the best decisions that you can at the time. And I feel like I made a great decision with this transition."

That was before the Knicks opened with a 5-22 record and the team struggled to internalize the changes Fisher and Jackson are trying to make.

Thus far Fisher has stood firmly behind Jackson's vision. He's not about to abandon the triangle just because it's been hard for the J.R. Smiths of the world to embrace it. Especially not a quarter of the way into Year 1, which many people expected to be a rebuilding year anyway. Progress is what matters now. Process. Moving through this stage into the next one. Despite their record, the Knicks feel there have actually been signs lately the team is starting to get what Jackson and Fisher are teaching. It just hasn't translated into wins yet. Hence Jackson's "loser mentality" quote last week.

"There's some resistance to discipline and order and culture change," Jackson said. "I will call it a crucible for what we're going through here. The process is going to refine some of the stuff so that we come out and be a pretty good team after all is said and done."

Kurt Rambis once told me that part of the reason Jackson had so much success changing the culture of his teams as a coach was that those teams had failed enough doing it their way that they were receptive to doing it Phil's way. Those were talented teams, though -- veteran teams that knew they had the talent to win, but needed someone to help them unlock it.

This Knicks team is nothing of the sort. It's a teardown project. You have to have the right kind of players to run the triangle and it's going to take a few years for Jackson to build that kind of roster.

That's the challenge Jackson wanted when he took the job as Knicks president. The way to prove once and for all that he didn't win 11 rings just by coaching ready-made championship teams. He wanted to build something from the ground up. To build an entire ecosystem the way he wanted it. There's something pure in that vision. Noble, even.

The problem is that it's his vision, his challenge, his mission, not Fisher's.

Fisher is the guy charged with building with another architect's plans. He's being paid well to do so and knew exactly what he was signing up for. So don't feel badly for him. But is he completely free to decide what he believes in, as Kerr is in Golden State? Can he truly find his own way and carve his own path when he's consulting with Jackson all the time?

Jackson has done his best to keep his distance. He rarely talks during practices, mostly choosing to watch from the stands out of sight so Fisher and the players don't feel like he's hovering. He's not traveling with the team either, knowing it's an important place for the team to create its own culture.

Asked if Jackson has given him enough space, Fisher said, "Yeah. I've been impressed, because I have tried to put myself in his shoes in terms of how difficult it would be to have given so much to the game and just not being in a place where physically he can give certain things. Although his mind still wants to, he can't. So I have been impressed by his ability to hold on to those natural reactions to things that he's seeing."

"

Dobbs We talk every day in some form or fashion. He is just giving me observations, things to think about, suggestions. But it is still my final decision on how I live that out.

"-- Fisher on working with Phil Jackson

But Fisher, Jackson and Rambis do speak every day and talk about every game.

"It's almost similar to our relationship to when I played for him," Fisher said. "He was trying to help me then to coach the team on the floor, on the things that are important to leading a group of guys.

"We talk every day in some form or fashion. He is just giving me observations, things to think about, suggestions. But it is still my final decision on how I live that out. Do I go and do it how he suggested? Or do I do it the way I think is best? I've tried to stick with what I think is true to me and to the players.

"So there are things that he asks that I haven't done yet, or I didn't do it the way he could do it. I've maybe tried to find a different way to do it. But it's been great. Everything has been great working with him in this different capacity."

Rambis said he told Fisher early on in his playing career he had a future in coaching if he wanted it. He could just see it was in him.

"I told him I thought he would be even more successful after playing basketball," Rambis said. "Even if he was going into business, the way he studies and analyzes, the nice comfortable way he has of communicating and relating to people. And he's a competitor, he' s a hard worker. This was many years ago that I told him this, but I always thought he would find something he'd be very successful at. Life always presents opportunities."

Last spring, life presented the same opportunity to Steve Kerr and Derek Fisher. But they walked through different doors and are now seen as different men.

Who are they now? Who are any of us but who we become after the choices we make?

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