Steve Kerr’s radio blitz conspicuously avoided his Warriors future

With the start of the NBA season just around the corner, Warriors head coach Steve Kerr recently went on a three-station radio tour to preview everything about what this new campaign has in store for Golden State. Well, almost everything.

Noticeably absent from Kerr’s platitudes about the start of a new year, talks of players being in the best shape of their lives and riffs with the local shock jocks was perhaps the most salient topic relating to the Dubs coach: his expiring contract. The 58-year-old has yet to reach an agreement on an extension with the Warriors, and his deal is up at the end of this season. This situation didn’t come up once during his appearances on Sirius XM, 95.7 The Game and KNBR.

It’s not like Kerr hasn’t talked about it at all this offseason. Reporters asked the four-time champion with the Dubs about this during Golden State’s media day, and he was pretty confident that things would work out.

“I feel great about my position here,” Kerr said in late September. “I want to be here. I know Mike and Joe want me here, and so I’m very confident something will get done. But I’m not stressed about it at all. I’m perfectly capable of coaching whether I have one year left or an extension. Makes no difference.”

He expanded on this with the Athletic’s Tim Kawakami in a podcast episode published Sept. 26. Even after general manager Bob Myers left at the beginning of the offseason, Kerr said the Warriors helped convince him to, at the very least, not follow that path toward an early exit.

“The good part of being a free agent or only having a year left is it gives you options,” Kerr told Kawakami. “So I really embraced it over the summer. When the direction of everything took shape and I saw where this was heading, hell yeah, I want to be a part of this. I’m excited for this year and hopefully for the next few.”

That was three weeks ago. Since then, Kerr has spent plenty of time in Warriors facilities between practices and preseason games, and still, there has yet to be any reported progress toward a new deal. 

It seems simple the way Kerr describes it. The Dubs want him, he wants to stay, and the future the organization envisions has him excited about what’s to come. From the Warriors’ perspective, keeping the coach who turned the Warriors into a dynasty, and who is just two years removed from his last championship, seems like a no-brainer.

Then again, the same thought would have been true for Myers this time last year, and he left anyway. Now an ESPN analyst, Myers added a little extra fuel to this specific fire Monday with part of his answer to a question about the Warriors: “I want Steve to keep coaching.”

Many Warriors fans would agree. However, if it were really as smooth sailing as Kerr described, they’d have a solution by now in the form of a new contract. Combine the lack of a new deal with the lack of new information, and you’ve got a holdup that is now anyone’s guess. At least the last time there wasn’t a clear answer on a Warriors extension, the blame could be placed on a novice television analyst. This time, it looks more like a lack of curiosity about something that should demand a lot of it.