Steve Kerr can play this off as if it were an attempt to re-engage his team throughout a long regular season whose forgone conclusion was reached prior to training camp. In fact, there's no reason to think that he'd be stretching the truth by doing so. However, let's not pretend we haven't heard that very same explanation from middle school teachers that - when I was growing up anyway - rolled a fat back to the front of the room and left Bill Nye in charge of the lesson plan. I'm certainly not comparing the chemistry maintenance done by the head coach of four star players to the biology being taught by some hungover 25 year old whose made nauseous by the sound of her students' voices, but in these particular instances their dissociative "teaching moment" sure as shit made their jobs a hell of a lot less painstaking. Maybe I'd feel differently if the Warriors weren't going up against an opponent that is an NBA institution of relegation away from becoming a middling playoff team in the G-League. After all, the drunk, homeless guy sleeping outside Gate D could have coached Golden State to a win over the Suns last night. Truth be told, the level of abject disrespect that it would take to call 'Eddie' down from the nosebleeds and have her orchestrate the half court offense is exactly the amount of respect that the Phoenix Suns have earned this season. Point being, as much credit as you want to give to Steve Kerr for actively abstaining from his responsibilities, he didn't exactly let his players draw up their own fate. Rather, he sat courtside and essentially supervised recess. Whether that has some profound effect on his team's focus going forward remains to be seen, but the fact that it's a tactic that's only available to the coach of the best team in the league when he's up against the worst team in the league speaks volumes about the risk required to resort to it. Anyway, if the mark of someone who has reached the peak of their profession is having the ability to leave the delegation of duties to those performing said duties then Steve Kerr was basically watching that 40+ point shellacking from a top the Mount Rushmore of NBA coaches. He may have just properly oiled the machine that Mark Jackson helped construct and Luke Walton helped to maintain in his absence, but being able to claim you're running it while do nothing more than casually admiring what that machine is able to manufacture on its own? Hard work be damned, because getting the job done by way of others in a satisfied workplace is the true mark of success.
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