OAKLAND, Calif. — A full three hours before a Golden State Warriors’ home exhibition game earlier this month, traffic was already locked up around Oracle Arena, an edgy combination of panic and excitement surrounding the NBA champs.
The Warriors already were without their head coach and, after losing that Oct. 13 game to the Denver Nuggets before an initially giddy sellout crowd, were just 1-2 in preseason play.
That’s when it was clear that Luke Walton was still Luke Walton.
Filling in for fellow ex-Wildcat Steve Kerr, the Warriors’ head coach whose leave of absence with back trouble will continue into Tuesday’s Golden State-New Orleans opener, Walton remains the same confident but laid-back personality he was as a player at Arizona, during a 10-year playing NBA career and as a Warriors assistant coach last season.
A day after the Nuggets game, when Walton met reporters following a fan event at Oracle, Walton was asked how the team responded from the loss.
“Today, they looked great,” Walton said. “Couple guys hit home runs. Couple of guys made some nice plays in the outfield.”
It was typical dry Walton humor, delivered with only the subtlest of smiles.
He was firm, saying he would be concerned if the Warriors lagged defensively into the regular season, but also used personality to help puncture questions that danced around the negative.
Even as the questions became more pointed. After the Denver loss, Walton was even asked if he had a “message” to give fans worried about the team’s struggles.
He didn’t flinch.
“No,” Walton said. “If we’re playing like this in a couple of weeks, then we’re gonna have another talk. But this is what the preseason is for, ironing these things out that we’ve had slippage in. We’ve had conversations with the players, so the coaches and the players know what we need to get better at. That’s what the preseason’s for.”
But for an assistant just thrown into the head coach’s seat, the conversations can be especially difficult. Walton says he and the Warriors staff has been trying to operate with a What-Would-Steve-Do? philosophy, but Walton is still the one making the ultimate decisions.
That means distancing himself somewhat further from players, when he’s less than three years removed from playing himself.
“He’s making that adjustment from assistant coach to a head coach and it’s very tricky finding that right mix, whether to lay down the hammer or still be himself,” said Warriors’ forward Andre Iguodala, another former Wildcat. “But we’ve got a lot of veteran guys, and guys who know the lay of the land, so we’re working together to make sure we get the most out of every day.”
Walton will have to stay in the lead role for an indefinite period of time. Golden State GM Bob Myers told the Bay Area News Group last weekend that Kerr met with the team for an update.
“He’s confident he will be back, but it’s all speculation as to when,” Myers said. “He told the team that Luke’s going to start the season as the coach, and they’re fully aware that they’re going to have to accept a little more responsibility. Luke, we have full confidence in, and he has a great staff around him.”
As a rookie head coach last season, Kerr made it a point to surround himself with a mix of veteran and youthful experience on his coaching staff. While Golden State lost top aide Alvin Gentry, now the Pelicans’ head coach — where he will coincidentally debut against the Warriors tonight — Walton still has veteran defensive guru Ron Adams to turn to, among others.
Walton said the staff has been close and that the support helps. But in, some ways, it doesn’t help enough.
As a person, as a friend, Walton still has to watch Kerr deal with the pain caused by his back surgery and with the frustration of having to stay off the floor. Advance warning that he might need to temporarily fill in for Kerr didn’t help all that much, either.
“I’ve known all summer that Steve was struggling,” Walton said. “I personally didn’t think it would get this bad, but I guess that was wishful thinking. He should be enjoying one of the greatest summers he’s ever had after (the championship), and having to deal with all this is unfair. But that’s life sometimes.
“He was really struggling that first week or so of practice. You always like to prepare for the worst and hope it doesn’t happen, so we started talking about that possibility.”
It became a necessity after doctors found Kerr’s spine was nicked during back surgery, causing spinal fluid to leak and prompting headaches.
In the long term, though, the experience could be helpful for Walton if he takes the head coach’s chair permanently somewhere, sometime in the future. Walton said he’s learned a lot about “pressures and responsibilities and day to day stuff a head coach needs to get done,” and the biggest one starts tonight.
That’s making sure the Warriors understand the honeymoon is over.
No more celebration, no more meaningless preseason.
It’s time to play, with or without Kerr.
“Everybody else has been hungry and fighting while we’ve been celebrating a championship,” Walton said. “So it’s not that crazy to see a little slip in the focus in the play of our team. But I think we’ll turn that around when the season starts.”
