The use of cell phones is as ingrained in the NBA world as it is for modern Americans at any other workplace. Golden State Warriors head coach Steve Kerr has seen it countless times, taking away from his players' focus and disrupting the sanctity of practice time and actual games.
Luckily, the Warriors coach has a plan to shame them into abandoning their devices — at least for some brief moments.
Via Drew Shiller of NBC Sports Bay Area:
“It's interesting because you have to decide as a coach in the modern era: ‘Am I gonna be the coach that says no phones? Am I gonna be that old-school guy?' It's really unrealistic,” Kerr said on his “Flying Coach” podcast. “You got to give them some leeway. So I just try to use some humor with it.”
The Warriors coach then revealed his strategy:
“I know they're gonna be on their phones. I'll just walk in and say something like, ‘Hey, fire off your last tweets (because) we gotta meet.' Something just to try to shame them a little bit so that they kind of realize, ‘Oh yeah. It's gametime.'
“But I'm not gonna be the coach to establish the ‘no cell phone rule' two hours before the game because I don't think that would work these days.”
Kerr isn't the disciplinarian who will often put rules in place to make things the way he wants. The 54-year-old Warriors coach is well aware that there is a give and take when it comes to technology.
The Warriors have benefited from advanced analytics, video scouting reports, and many other gifts the Bay Area tech scene has given them in recent years.
Players now live a much different reality than Kerr did during the '90s as a player, and he has learned to embrace it while putting his own spin to the rules he must instill within the Warriors organization.
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