Where are Warriors with Steve Kerr's new offense? ‘Not anywhere close to where we want to be.'

LAS VEGAS – Strain was felt, here, in each of Steve Kerr‘s steps. He emerged from a postgame meeting at T-Mobile Arena dialed like a wind-up toy. Steel in his eyes. Furrow in his brow. 

Over the decades, in front of a microphone, the Golden State Warriors coach has become an expert at defusing any internal strife through external kinesics. At concealing tension within a calmer presentation.

There was no concealing this on Tuesday night.

“We’ve gotta execute better,” Kerr told a small group of reporters after the Warriors’ 101-89 preseason win over the Lakers. “We have to finish in transition, make the easy plays. And we’re not that close yet.”

Are they where they want to be?

“No,” Kerr said, matter-of-fact. “We’re not anywhere close to where we want to be. 

“We have a clear vision,” he continued. “Players are great guys. They’re committed. They want to do well. But our execution is just scattered, at this point.”

Kerr’s Warriors, entering his 13th season, are 3-2 this preseason. That means something. It mostly means nothing. Five games and two weeks of tinker-ball have brought various five-man lineup combinations, and mixing and matching around a slew of injuries and veteran absences, and trying to squeeze the juice of a roster that has obvious flaws (center depth, point-of-attack defense, non-Stephen Curry creation). None of it, though, will matter if Kerr can’t garner buy-in from an aging roster to a wider philosophical shift.

The intricacies within the Warriors’ newer five-out principles – starting possessions with five players on the perimeter – are naturally complex. Zoom out, though, and players understand a two-point “task,” as Curry put it in Hawaii on Oct. 4. One: cut down turnovers. Two: get more organized offensively. 

This has yet to take. The clock is ticking. And Kerr isn’t hiding his angst.

“Tonight was just a lack of flow, a lack of recognition of what we’re trying to do after made baskets, offensively,” Kerr said. “And that’s the whole thing we’re trying to teach, this year, is – getting to consistent spots, making consistent cuts, getting away from the random stuff that we’ve run in the past. And so, we have to be more organized. And we’re going to keep demanding it.”

On Monday, Kerr told reporters that the focus of Golden State’s practice was “decision-making,” given a remarkable 84 turnovers through four games. The Warriors averaged 15.7 per game last season, good for 27th in the league. This has been, visibly, the primary source of frustration for Kerr on the bench at any given minute this preseason, watching a ball sail out of bounds on a missed read. 

Transition is not easy. Last Saturday, before a preseason win over the Kings, the Warriors held a 30-minute walkthrough – a mini-practice – in a new phenomenon. Kerr is trying to maximize time spent actually learning on-court, to install new concepts and spacing. Now, as he said Monday, players have to actually translate that into good decision-making.

“Just things like, (if) you’re attacking the rim and there’s nobody there, you keep going,” Kerr said then. “If somebody is there, pick it up, play off two feet, and if the stuff we’re teaching is holding, there will be somebody open.”

A day later, though, Golden State turned the ball over 20 more times against the Lakers. Curry – no longer immune from internal turnover-based criticism – flung a careless lefty lob that was intercepted. Reserve center Charles Bassey rebounded hard, but committed five giveaways in 27 minutes. Forward Gui Santos, who is adamant about taking another offensive leap by cutting down turnovers, committed three in 24 minutes.

Games, across the past two weeks, have actually calmed down once Kerr subs the top of his rotation for his deeper bench, or training-camp hopefuls. There’s a reason. The Warriors’ younger guard – from rookie Yaxel Lendeborg to second-year guard Will Richard and two-way grinders like Graham Ike and Malevy Leons – began repping these concepts during a Summer League win back in Las Vegas in July. The holdovers, actually, are the ones behind. 

The rookie has seen it.

“The vets, the main guys, haven’t really gotten as many reps as us with the new offense,” Lendeborg told the Chronicle postgame. “So, I feel like that’s the only problem that’s really slowing us down right now. Not figuring out the spots, as quickly as possible. But these guys are pros, and they’ve been here a long time, so I feel like it’s going to come up a lot easier.”

The Warriors of old thrived in chaos. They aren’t talented enough, anymore, to do that. This shift is existential, forcing an organization that has won one way for 15 years to shift its thinking.

It appears a slow-turning barge, at the moment.

“It is what it is,” Kerr said Tuesday. “Like, we’ve been working as hard as we can. And so, I do think that it’ll come. 

“But we’re not there yet.”

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This article originally published at Where are Warriors with Steve Kerr’s new offense? ‘Not anywhere close to where we want to be.’.