Warriors' Steve Kerr Marvels At ‘remarkable' Thunder's Historic Start To Season

Warriors' Steve Kerr marvels at ‘remarkable' Thunder's historic start to season originally appeared on NBC Sports Bay Area

SAN FRANCISCO — Steve Kerr knows better than anyone in NBA history what it takes to break the single-season wins record.

He has done it twice.

First, as a player on the iconic 1995-96 Chicago Bulls team that went 72-10 in the regular season before securing its fourth of six NBA championships in eight years.

Then, as the coach of the 2015-16 Warriors, who went 73-9 in the regular season before losing to the Cleveland Cavaliers in the NBA Finals.

Fast-forward to this season, and Kerr and the Warriors are preparing to face off against the defending-champion Oklahoma City Thunder, who enter Tuesday’s game at Chase Center with an NBA-best record of 20-1.

Not only are the Thunder off to a blistering-hot start, to put it mildly, but OKC currently is on pace to go 78-4 this season, which would shatter the records set by both of Kerr’s iconic teams.

While there is a long, long, long way to go before we officially are on Record Watch, this is the first team since the Warriors broke the record nine years ago that actually feels like they have a very real — if not likely — shot of doing the previously unthinkable.

So what will it take? Nobody knows better than Kerr.

“Overall team mindset of zero agendas, just win every night,” Kerr said pregame Tuesday when asked about the formula to win 70-plus games. “Obviously great talent, but I think high-IQ players [that those teams] had really high IQs individually and as a team, and that’s what I see with OKC. Really, really smart players, good coach, really connected. They’re on pace to shatter the record, it’s pretty remarkable what they’re doing.”

Oklahoma City went 68-14 in the regular season last year before notching 16 more victories in the playoffs, which gave the Thunder 84 total wins on the season, the third-most in NBA history.

Care to guess which two teams had more?

Not only have the Thunder picked up right where they left off in June, but they’re arguably more well-rounded as a team and playing better this season than they did throughout all of last year.

“They have a deeper level of confidence now that they’ve won it all, and then the continuity is so powerful,” Kerr explained. “All their actions that they’re running, they’re so comfortable with. They’ve expanded their offense a little bit, they have a little more motion than they did a year ago. And so these are all things that, in my experience, happen after the championship. After the first one. You’ve got a little different swagger, a little different belief. Next year is the harder one.”

We’re only 21 games into the regular season, and months away from Oklahoma City potentially needing to have some difficult conversations about how to approach the stretch run and how to put its stars in the best position to hoist another Larry O’Brien Trophy this summer.

However, if the Thunder’s potential record chase is anything like Kerr and the Warriors’, there might not be many conversations to be had.

And if there are, the message should be simple.

“We had a game late in the year in Memphis, maybe four or five games remaining, and I was really intent on playing a lot of people and not wearing our guys out,” Kerr recalled when asked if there was a moment where the Warriors decided they were going for the record. “At halftime, Draymond [Green] pulled me aside. He said ‘We really want this thing, let’s not mess around in the second half.’ That was the only discussion I really remember around the record.”

At some point, Oklahoma City will suffer its second loss. Will that be on Tuesday night against a Golden State team, or pieces of one, that once reached the mountaintop that the Thunder currently are climbing?

It seems unlikely, as the Warriors on Tuesday will be without superstar Steph Curry (quad contusion), who led his team to 73 wins nine years ago, but even the mightiest of teams can fall on any given night.

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