Why would Steve Kerr take his Warriors over the Rockets? 'Our guys have rings'
You won’t get much trash talk in the media from Golden State Warriors coach Steve Kerr, so this assessment of what his team has and what the Houston Rockets don’t might be the closest you get.
Asked about the theory that the top-seeded Houston Rockets — a team led by two ring-hungry superstars — might have the upper hand in the Western Conference finals, Kerr said, via ESPN:
“No, I like where we are. Our guys have rings. That’s a good position to be in. To me, the hardest championship is the first one, as an individual player and as a team, because you don’t know — you don’t quite know — if you can do it.
“Once you get the first one, there’s a little bit of house money. But you want it again because it’s an unbelievable feeling. I like our position. We’re going to go in here knowing we’re the defending champs, knowing we got a couple of championships here the last few years. Let’s go get another one. It’s a nice feeling to have and to go into a series with.”
Our guys have rings. That’s quite a reminder right there from someone who has seven championships to his name. Rockets guards James Harden and Chris Paul have notoriously struggled in the playoffs, and Kerr is making it clear that he believes his team’s prior success is an advantage because of it.
You might also interpret it as a veiled shot at Rockets coach Mike D’Antoni, who Kerr once fired during their days together with the Phoenix Suns, if the Warriors coach hadn’t been so effusive with his praise recently of D’Antoni’s influence on him and his role in ushering in the pace-and-space era.
Really, what Kerr is saying is just a less-colorful version of what Draymond Green said the other day:
Draymond Green gets excited when @ChrisBHaynes asks if Warriors wanted the Rockets: "Man, we won 2 championships in 3 years we're not going to run off saying how bad we want to play somebody! We want another championship… It don't matter to us who we play." pic.twitter.com/QCeOmkItqv
— Ben Golliver (@BenGolliver) May 9, 2018
“Man, we won two championships in three years. We’re not about to run off talking about how bad we want to play somebody,” said Green. “We want to win another championship, and it don’t matter who’s in the way of that. If you’re in the way of that, then you happen to be in the way. But we’re not about to run around like, ‘Yeah, we want to play them in the conference finals.’ For what? It doesn’t matter to us who we play. However, we got them. All right, now let’s get it. We get to it now.
“We’ve got a goal. Whoever is in the way of that goal, then we got to see you. You got to see us. All right now, they’re in the way. Perfect. But we’re not running around talking about, ‘Man, we want them bad.’ Nah, we want a championship bad. Another one.”
Can we fast forward to Game 1 already?
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Ben Rohrbach is a writer for Yahoo Sports. Have a tip? Email him at rohrbach_ben@yahoo.com or follow him on Twitter! Follow @brohrbach
