Kerr on another Warriors loss: ‘I thought our guys were great’

By Art Spander

SAN FRANCISCO — They did what they could, what they were capable of, which pleased their coach, Steve Kerr, if not the fans. It was another loss for the Warriors, the 10^th in a row, their longest winless streak in 17 years.

And yet not just another loss.

This season is going nowhere. We knew it the night Steph Curry broke his hand, the fourth game of the schedule, against Phoenix here at Chase Center. And we know it now, two and a half months later.

You can’t lose your stars, in a league where stars control the game, and not expect to lose games.

After that, with Kevin Durant gone and with Klay Thompson in rehab, the question was what the kids on the court could do, the young kids like Eric Paschall and Jordan Poole, the older kids like Willie Cauley-Stein and D’Angelo Russell.

They could stumble and bumble and look awful, as they did a couple of nights back against Dallas. Or they could perform as well as possible against a team acknowledgably superior, take the lead, be there at the end and then fail in overtime, as the Dubs did, 134-131, on Thursday night against Denver.

It’s a familiar story, if a sad one. The other team is better, and even though the Nuggets were without key players, Jamal Murray and Paul Millsap, even though they had played the previous night, even though they trailed by 19 points in the first quarter, they won.

A year ago, two, three, four, five years ago, the Warriors would have won. But this is now. This isn’t then. And Kerr seemed less concerned with the defeat — hey, they have the worst winning percentage in the NBA — then the undeniable fact his team was wonderfully competitive.

“I thought our guys were great tonight,” said Warriors coach Steve Kerr. They were.

Not great, compared to the Warriors who had the Splash Brothers, who had the settling influences of Andre Iguodala and Shaun Livingston, who had the unstoppable Durant and the fiery Draymond Green.

But great for what they provided.

Great for giving the Warriors insight to what they can do — and what they can’t.

The Nuggets came in with a 28-12 record, the Warriors 9-33. What happened was hardly a surprise. Denver outscored the Warriors by 12 points, 40-28, in the fourth quarter. Good teams find a way. So do teams that aren’t good.

“They were going to (Nikola) Jokic, who might be the best center in the league,” said Kerr. Jokic had 23 points, 10 in the fourth quarter, 12 rebounds and two blocked shots.

“One of the best offensive teams in the league,” Kerr said of Denver, “and they are a tough team to guard. So the key in the fourth quarter, any time you are trying to close the game, you want to execute and not turn the ball over. We had a couple of turnovers that really hurt us.”

A couple turnovers that maybe don't happen with more experience and a teammate or two, in addition to Draymond Green, who will seem less flustered when under pressure.

“Defensively,” said Kerr, “we battled, and we were trying. But (Denver) got going. They are capable of doing that. I’m proud of our guys. I feel bad for them because they played well enough to win and just couldn’t do it.”

There’s a painful reminder of the Warriors of years past. They would take the lead, hang in and then fade.

“I mean 18 turnovers didn’t help,” said Damion Lee, “and their shooters got going. Of course we could have played better, but you’ve got to give them credit.”

Lee, who had been on one of those stressful two-way contracts (up and back between San Francisco and Santa Cruz), was playing his first game after signing a three-year contract with the Warriors. He had 21 points (Alec Burks led the Dubs with 25) and six assists, one of which enabled Eric Paschall to score with two seconds left in regulation.

“The ball tends to find energy,” said Lee. “As long as everybody’s touching it, make the easy play and get back on defense.”

This season, no play is easy for the Warriors.

For Niners coach, Warriors are Golden State standard

SANTA CLARA, Calif.—The Warriors, always the Warriors. Inevitably the Warriors.  They have become the Golden State standard of sporting success in Northern Cal.

   Even in a year they’re not successful. Even for the man whose current team held that exalted position as king of the Nob Hill --and may once again, Kyle Shanahan of the 49ers.

  Wednesday, four days away from undeniably the biggest game of Shanahan’s brief career as an NFL head coach.

  The NFC Championship figuratively on the table as the familiar helmets of the competing teams, the 49ers and Green Bay Packers literally were on a small table adjacent to where Shanahan and others spoke.

  “A dog and pony show, Shanahan called the display.

    There are numerous subplots to this game, albeit none involving dogs or ponies.

 Quarterbacking the Packers is Aaron Rodgers, the Cal kid, who when San Francisco held the No, 1 pick in the 2005 draft the Niners could have taken—should have taken.

  Shanahan has the opportunity to reach the Super Bowl his third year as a Niners coach, the way Bill Walsh the season of 1981 did his third year as Niners coach.

  The Niners started 0-9 in Shanahan’s first year; they went 2-14 Walsh’s first year, 981

  Joe Montana, a third-round pick became the star of those 1980s champion Niners; Jimmy Garoppolo was a second-round pick by New England, where he was supposed to be the next Tom Brady. Instead he has the chance to be the next Montana.

  And as Shanahan mentioned do not forget the Warriors, who were in the NBA finals the previous five years and captured the hearts of Bay Area fans—including the heart of Kyle Shanahan.

  ‘I have always been a fan of theirs, even before I got here,” said Shanahan who arrived in February 2017, well into Dubs’ half-decade of dominance.

    “Just watching how they play, I remember saying in Atlanta (he was the Falcons offensive coordinator) I wanted our receiver group to be similar to the Warriors to where who knows who the starter is; they can all play; Andre Iguodala, things like that. He wasn’t a starter, and he’s the NBA championship MVP.”

   If the sports aren’t comparable, pro football being more specialized, Shanahan’s thinking is understood. He wants athletes who are more concerned with the team’s success than their own.

  “”You’ve got a defensive player,” Shanahan said of Iguodala. “Guys who seem really not to care how it gets done.”

   Niners players tell you Garoppolo fits the template. His last game, he barely threw the ball, San Francisco running 47 times in the divisional win over Minnesota.

      “As long as we win,” Garoppolo affirmed. “I’m pretty happy when we win.”

    He’s been quite happy of late, and in command, part of a group Shanahan insists is as mature as any he’s been around, respectful of teammates, attentive to coaches.

  Veteran tackle Joe Staley said the team has a different vibe. There are no factions, no finger-pointing. Instead of looking for blame, said Shanahan, the players have looked for ways to improve. “You got the right guys,” said Shanahan, “they won’t stop working.”

   The Niners had the right guys in the 1980s and early ‘90s, Montana, Dwight Clark, Ronnie Lott, Roger Craig, Steve Young, Jerry Rice, and even though he was young—born in 1979—Shanahan knows the history. His dad was a Niners assistant coach in ’94.

  “I think being around, even at a young age, I knew how special the Super Bowl was,” said Shanahan “I think people of my generation, when they think of teams, big-time teams, it was the Niners, the Cowboys. You’ve got baseball; you got the Yankees and the Red Sox.  Growing up for me in basketball (he was from Chicago) it was always the Bulls.

  “We knew we had to build this team up and get back. But we knew how good the organization is.”

   Is it good enough to get the Niners where they used to be--or where the Warriors were? We’ll learn quickly enough.

Shanahan, the fan, knows how uplifting a win can be

By Art Spander

SANTA CLARA, Calif. — It was a television reporter who asked Kyle Shanahan, the 49ers coach, the question nobody who regularly covers the team would have asked, to wit:

Did Shanahan get a sense of regional uplifting that a win such as the one over the Vikings can do for the Bay Area?

There are football people who would have dismissed the idea out of hand, telling us their job is about what happens on the field, not in the stands. But that’s not Shanahan.

“That stuff does it for me too,” Shanahan said Monday at Niners headquarters, responding to the question. “Not just as a coach, but as a fan. I love sport.

“When I watched the Warriors do good here for the two years I was here prior to this year, that uplifts me, and I love what sports does for people.”

What the 49ers have done this season is call down some recent echoes. They are in the NFC Championship game Sunday night against Green Bay at Levi’s Stadium. Suddenly, it’s the 1980s once again.

This isn’t Charlotte where, when a major golf tournament, the PGA Championship, was played there, a local reporter asked the golfers what they thought of the city. Not the course, the city, the restaurants, the stores.

We know what people think of San Francisco, of Oakland, of San Jose. Who cares if the Niners play in Santa Clara? Not TV, which during games offers shots of the Bay Bridge, when it isn’t showing us the Golden Gate.

Kyle Shanahan has been around and part of winners: offensive coordinator on the Falcons, who went to the Super Bowl three years ago; an intern with his dad’s Broncos, Super Bowl champions in 1997 and 1998.

“Anytime you have a team that has a chance to be in the situation we’re in,” Kyle Shanahan said, “where the Warriors have been a lot, sports are great. It gives everyone a break from stuff. You always want to support your home team, and I’m glad we’re giving something to be proud of this year.”

True, Northern Cal has had its share of titles, every pro team other than the Sharks taking a championship. When the Niners finally won, in the 1981 season, it was, dare we use the word, a virtual earthquake — the team that was here first, after seasons of disappointment, coming in first last.

The Bay Area, California, the entire west, had only college sports and minor league baseball until 1946. Then the Cleveland Rams moved to Los Angeles. Then the 49ers were formed in San Francisco.

No Giants until 1958. No Raiders until 1960. No Warriors until 1962. No A’s until 1968. No Sharks until 1991 (although the California Golden Seals were around from 1967-76).

The Niners were the original, the attraction and, for 35 years without any sort of playoff win, eternal frustration. So when Dwight Clark made “The Catch” in January 1982 against Dallas (after a divisional victory over the New York Giants), the elation was understandable. And, for a long while, unstoppable.

Bill Walsh was the coach who broke the spell. “You can stop writing we can’t win the big one,” he told me maybe an hour after Clark’s catch. Since then, there have been numerous big ones.

Another is Sunday. Will this be a return to greatness, to the Super Bowl, a game that in the 1980s and early ‘90s almost seemed part of the Niners’ regular schedule? Or will this be only a letdown?

In the glory years, the Niners won their championships while playing at deteriorating Candlestick Park — then-owner Eddie DeBartolo called the stadium “a dump.” But it was full and loud. But now the home games, as this coming Sunday's game will be, are at Levi’s, which was mostly empty and very quiet. Until last weekend.

“The fan noise,” said Shanahan of the last game, “is as big of a difference as probably our team is. They’ve gotten a lot louder as we’ve gotten better. It was just unbelievable Saturday.

“All I saw in the stands were red jerseys. It gave us a special feeling.”   

Just as winning teams invariably give their communities.

Niners running toward the Super Bowl

By Art Spander

SANTA CLARA, Calif. — This was back in the 1980s, when another 49ers team of another era — a very good one at that — hit the road and got hit, 17-3, in a playoff game by the New York Giants.

The Niners were unable to move the ball against the defense and the weather.

That was when the New York coach, Bill Parcells, sneered at the system of Niners coach Bill Walsh, giving it a name, contending in so many words, “Back here when it gets cold and windy, that West Coast offense doesn’t work. You’ve got to be able to run the ball.”

It doesn’t really matter what the conditions are. A team always needs to run the ball. Maybe not as emphatically as the Niners, the 2020 Niners, did Saturday, defeating the Minnesota Vikings, 27-10, in their NFC Divisional playoff win, but run frequently and consistently.

For all the talk about how the NFL has morphed into a passing league, the run remains the essence of football. You take the ball and virtually shove it through the other team. Then do it again. And again, building your momentum and wearing down the opposition.

Never mind balance, this is battering. The Niners ran the ball 47 times. In one third-quarter-sequence, they ran it eight plays in a row and scored.

It was football out of the 50s, the old Woody Hayes game at Ohio State, three yards and a cloud of dust. It was boring. It was beautiful. It was successful.

It also helped keep the ball from the Vikings; the time of possession was a highly disproportionate 38 minutes and 27 seconds for the Niners compared to 21 minutes and 33 seconds for Minnesota.

“I think 47 rushes is pretty good, right?” was Niners tight end George Kittle’s assessment. “I personally feel we don’t run the ball enough every single week.”

They’ll have another chance Sunday in the NFC Championship game against either Seattle or Green Bay, each of which the 14-3 Niners defeated during the regular season.

San Francisco was the No. 1 NFC seed in the postseason, so it didn’t have to be cute — why take chances when you’re favored? — only dominant.

“We’ve been playing good football all year,” said Kittle. “People keep telling us we’re not very good.”

What they can say now is the Niners are one game away from the Super Bowl.

And one reason is the young quarterback Jimmy Garoppolo, who obviously passed infrequently (the Niners throwing a mere 19 times, completing 11 for 131 yards).

But on this afternoon when Levi’s Stadium hosted its first postseason game, and when the seats at last were packed with fans, many chanting “Defense, defense,” Garoppolo showed a skill unknown for many quarterbacks.

On one of the 47 runs, a run by Debo Samuel, Garoppolo was a blocker.

“I saw an opportunity,” said Garoppolo. “He was a little off balance. Had to get a pancake.” That’s the term for flattening a potential tackler.

On the other side, Niners cornerback Richard Sherman figuratively flattened all Vikings hopes with an interception, which led to the repetitive runs that resulted in the third-period touchdown.

“It’s that complementary football,” said Garoppolo, linking the defense to the offense and the offense to the defense.

And having the crowd linked to everything. It’s been a while since the Niners created so much excitement in Northern California. Since the last Super Bowl victory, the Warriors became the best team in the NBA and the Giants won three World Series. Now we've got the Niners renaissance.

“I was pumped up with the defense,” said Niners coach Kyle Shanahan, who then spoke of the offense.

“We had a pre-game goal,” said Shanahan. “We thought the team that got over 30 runs would win this game.”

It did, easily.

“We knew coming into the season we had a chance to compete in every game,” said Shanahan. “Now I can’t wait to watch these games Sunday to find out who we’re playing.”

Last-place Warriors back on their treadmill

By Art Spander

SAN FRANCISCO — ESPN has an ulterior motive, if a very understandable one.

The network wants us to watch. So on the screen for a game that, except for one great player, Giannis Antetokounmpo, was of no national interest, it kept listing his team, Milwaukee, as having the best record in the NBA East.

The other team, the Warriors, the opponent, were “No. 15 in the West.” Impressive. Until you realize there are only 15 teams.

Indeed the Dubs are last.

This isn’t, as they used to say, man-bites-dog news, but nearly half way through this very predictable and yet still very distressing season there was a hope the Dubs would be off the treadmill.

However, they’re still going nowhere, at least in terms of results. Well, actually they’ve returned to going nowhere.

There was a four-game win streak a few days back, but the 107-98 loss Wednesday night at Chase Center was their sixth in a row.

At least the Warriors didn’t anger coach Steve Kerr with listless play, as they did two nights earlier at Sacramento when he screamed obscenities at the officials and earned an ejection and a $25,000 fine.

Against the Bucks, Kerr liked the effort, which when a team isn’t any good is about all anyone can wish. The Dubs kept falling behind, as was expected, and then kept battling back, which wasn’t expected.

The Warriors climbed to within five points with a minute, six seconds remaining. Not bad, in relative terms, if you’re not going to win.

The Warriors' games this season, with Steph Curry and Klay Thompson out because of injuries, are comparable to those of the bad old days. The only reason to go — assuming you didn’t put down a king’s ransom for season tickets at the billion-and-a-half-dollar Chase — is to watch the visiting team.

It was like that over the years, first with Bill Russell and the Celtics, then Michael Jordan and the Bulls, then Shaq O’Neal and Kobe Bryant of the Lakers. I skipped Kareem and Magic, but how much pain can one absorb?

Anyway, the star was there but he was on the wrong team, beating the Warriors. The 7-foot Antetokounmpo was last season’s MVP and dreamers think a future Warrior.

Giannis didn’t have his best game, but 30 points, 12 rebounds and four assists isn’t terrible, either.

“Even when he doesn’t shoot well,” said Kerr (Antetokounmpo was 10 for 21, 1 for 7 on 3-pointers), “he has a huge impact. We tried to make him work. We did a good job, but we just couldn’t hang in there.

“We played great defense in the first half against the best team in the league.”

Does that count for something, especially to the home crowd? The people come, but they aren’t very enthusiastic. That the Warriors change uniforms and the court (both read “San Francisco” on Wednesday) doesn’t seem to mean much to fans who watched their team win a record 73 games one year and reach the NBA finals five straight seasons.

They’re spoiled. And they should be. Going back in time doesn’t work. Alec Burks, a journeyman in the most positive sense of the word, did score 19 for the Warriors, and the great hope of the future, Alen Smailagic, had 10 (8 in the first half when he led everyone). Still, there wasn’t a chance the Warriors were going to win.

The Bay Area is sport’s Broadway, not the bushes. The crowd is paying for greatness. It got its money’s worth with Milwaukee. The Warriors? They’re No. 15 in the West. And there only are 15 teams.