Kerr proud of Warriors’ year-long resilience amid not being a ‘championship team’

Despite their title defense coming down to a sour conclusion in the Conference Semifinals against the Los Angeles Lakers, Steve Kerr can’t be more proud of the Golden State Warriors’ resilience throughout this season.

As such, from all the hurdles that they’ve overcome and abysmal performances they settled, he believes that they are not that entirely capable to regain that golden status as a championship contender if compared to their last year’s run.

“We were barely in the playoff picture for most of the year,” Kerr said. “So, to make that push to get there, to win an epic first-round series and to give the Lakers a fight in this series and have our chances, that puts us among the top eight teams in the league. That’s probably where we should be.

“This is not a championship team. If we were, we’d be moving on.”

The Dubs encountered obstacles throughout the course of the year, from injuries, inconsistencies and off-court issues involving their core foundation. Amid these, they managed to evade the Play-In Tournament to fill the division’s sixth-seed.

They faced a young, hungry Sacramento Kings team that made history upon erasing their 16-year playoff drought and pushed them towards the brink of elimination. They went on to emerge supreme in seven gruelling games only to face a familiar rival in LeBron James and the Los Angeles Lakers.

Behind James and Anthony Davis, the Lakers delivered a heck of a fight due to their loaded contributors and two-way balance, dragging them to six total games and ending their reign as the Kings of the NBA.

Though their collapse is nothing but painful in hindsight given that they made it truly far just to come up short in the Conference Semis, Kerr is still happy that they’ve been able to keep their hold while competing.

“You can look on the year and see all the ups and downs and there’s all kinds of stuff that went on and adversity that hit,” he said. “But our group stayed together and competed until the end and made a pretty good run.”