Steve Kerr takes over at USA Basketball training camp

Jul 11, 2023

LAS VEGAS — For 16 fruitful years, USA Basketball was guided by Mike Krzyzewski and Gregg Popovich, a pair of no-nonsense, military-bred coaching icons whose presence in the gym was enough to make everyone stand up a bit straighter.

Krzyzewski, the Army point guard turned Duke mainstay, invited combat veterans to speak to the national team about duty, sacrifice and patriotism. Popovich, who served in the Air Force, preached a disciplined, group-first message that he honed while guiding the San Antonio Spurs to five NBA championships. The coaches, who are now both in their mid-70s, combined to deliver gold medals at four Olympics and two FIBA World Cups, reestablishing America’s basketball dominance after an early-2000s swoon.

When USA Basketball began its training camp Thursday for the upcoming FIBA World Cup, Steve Kerr treated his first practice as a crash course, not a boot camp. The Golden State Warriors coach, who was named as Popovich’s successor in 2021, said that one of his top priorities was to “develop a really good vibe” so that his new-look team would be comfortable and productive.

USA Basketball’s road to the FIBA World Cup, explained

That dash of surfer lingo made it tempting to cast Kerr as a laid-back Ken, of “Barbie” fame, rather than as an extension of his grave predecessors’ “Oppenheimer” sensibilities. USA Basketball, though, hopes its coaching change will be a stylistic refresh, not a sharp break from the recent past.

“Every generation is different,” USA Basketball Managing Director Grant Hill said. “Steve is the right personality for the new wave of young players. He has a unique way about how he communicates. You want to play for him. You want to run through a wall for him. He doesn’t create an environment where there’s pressure. He keeps it loose while being able to convey the importance of the moment.

“At its core, it’s the same culture that’s been there. Maybe we reach [the players] in a different way, but we’re trying to instill the same values and principles and the pride of representing your country.”

Kerr, of course, has serious basketball credentials to go with his sunny disposition and California roots: four championships with the Warriors, a 15-year NBA playing career and successful stints as an NBA executive and commentator. The 57-year-old coach, who served as an assistant under Popovich during the 2019 FIBA World Cup in China and at the Tokyo Olympics in 2021, also earned a gold medal at the 1986 FIBA World Championship during his collegiate playing career at Arizona.

That wide range of experiences and deep institutional knowledge of the national team, Hill said, made Kerr a natural choice as USA Basketball’s coach. As Hill neared the end of his Hall of Fame career, he played for the Phoenix Suns when Kerr was serving as the team’s general manager. Hill’s firsthand look at Kerr’s collaborative style and steady temperament led him to conclude that those attributes would be major assets to USA Basketball’s recruiting and game-planning efforts.

Before bringing the team together for camp at UNLV, Kerr reflected on USA Basketball’s seventh-place finish at the 2019 FIBA World Cup, rethinking everything from lineup combinations and play-calls to how he should structure practices for maximum efficiency.

Kerr’s biggest takeaway from the Americans’ disappointing 2019 showing, which included losses to Nigeria, Australia, France and Serbia in exhibitions and games, concerned the quality of competition. This year’s group, which is the early favorite to win gold, must contend with perennial powers such as Spain and France, plus Luka Doncic’s Slovenia and a Canadian team led by NBA stars Shai Gilgeous-Alexander and Jamal Murray.

“This is not 1954, when the American team just steamrolled everybody,” Kerr said. “It’s an international game. We respect the FIBA game, and we respect the hell out of our opponents because they’re damn good. We’re going to do everything we can to win.”

Team USA’s roster is composed entirely of players who are 28 years old or younger. None have previous experience playing in the Olympics or at a FIBA World Cup, and Milwaukee Bucks forward Bobby Portis is the group’s lone NBA champion.

Hill and Kerr welcomed the 12-man team Wednesday by detailing their own playing experiences for USA Basketball. The 50-year-old Hill, who won a gold medal at the 1996 Olympics with “Dream Team III,” told the players that donning the USA jersey was a “magical feeling” they should embrace and respect.

“These guys will feel it very soon,” Hill said. “Steve is helping them understand what they’re about to experience. Part of his job is to prepare them, not just the X’s and O’s, but the mental and emotional aspect of this journey.”

Kerr opened camp by reviewing the differences between NBA and FIBA rules and explaining some nuances of the international game, such as the high volume of inbounds plays from the baseline. He also pledged to keep his schemes as simple as possible because of the tournament’s compressed timeline: USA Basketball will have just four days of training before its first exhibition game Monday against Puerto Rico, and it will open FIBA World Cup play Aug. 26 in the Philippines.

“[Kerr told us] we want to learn the FIBA game and we want to learn it fast,” New York Knicks guard Jalen Brunson said. “You have [international] teams that have been playing together for a long time, and they meet every summer. For us, we’ve just got to get on track fast. Steve’s cool. He gets his message across, and he’s a great person to be around.”

Brunson, Mikal Bridges, Anthony Edwards, Jaren Jackson Jr. and Tyrese Haliburton are expected to play key roles, though USA Basketball won’t settle on its starting lineup for at least a week. Edwards and Brunson, in particular, were lead scoring options in the opening day’s scrimmages.

Before Kerr worked his way around the gym, chatting with Warriors General Manager Mike Dunleavy Jr. and former Warriors executive Bob Myers, he noted that his summer gig was easier in some ways than coaching an NBA team through the twists and turns of an 82-game regular season.

The national team’s sole focus for the next six weeks is basketball. There won’t be any distractions caused by players gunning for new contracts, fighting over starting spots or worrying about trades. Gold-or-bust expectations are second nature to players raised in the NBA’s rings-obsessed culture, and the FIBA World Cup’s tight schedule guarantees a quick payoff for competitive junkies such as Kerr.

“It’s a balance,” Hill said. “You want to embrace the pressure and be aware of what’s at stake, but you also want to play with joy and not be uptight. Particularly with a young group, we want to find that fine line where it’s fun with a sense of urgency. It’s like we’re helicoptering into the NCAA tournament [without playing a regular season]. Steve is the perfect person to manage that.”

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