3 Reasons Steve Kerr Could Leave Warriors, End 12-Year Head Coach Tenure

The Golden State Warriors braintrust and Steve Kerr were expected to meet some time this week to decide his future, but it appears that meeting won't happen as soon as once thought.

ESPN's Anthony Slater wrote on Thursday that a Kerr decision won't come "until next week at the earliest."

"It's April," a team source told Slater. "We don't need to rush."

As Kerr ponders what he wants, he's surely making a pros and cons list. It's impossible to know exactly what he's feeling, but it's not hard to imagine why he'd walk away.

Here are three potential reasons Kerr could leave the Warriors.

Feeling Undermined by the Kuminga Saga

When I first came up with the idea to write this article, I knew the Jonathan Kuminga tenure would be featured. I was always going to mention that Kerr reportedly didn't want Kuminga in the draft, and then the front office essentially forced Kerr into an uncomfortable months-long stretch in the 2025-26 season by signing him instead of trading him in the offseason.

What ended up happening is well-known: Kuminga got benched, demanded a trade and was eventually traded with Buddy Hield for Kristaps Porzingis.

But it wasn't until I listened to a recent Light Years podcast episode from Sam Esfandiari and Andy Liu that I realized the biggest issue from the Kuminga era might have been the feeling of being undermined.

There were a few instances of "sources" telling the media that Kuminga was unhappy with Kerr. Perhaps the most famous one was in January 2024 when Anthony Slater and Shams Charania reported that Kuminga had lost faith in Kerr.

That a player would fight a media war with a four-time title-winning coach is not unheard of, but the fact that the coach's front office essentially let the player do it for a couple years without trading him is why Kerr might feel undermined.

As Esfandiari noted, you have to wonder how this situation would have been handled with Phil Jackson, Pat Riley or Gregg Popovich coaching. Perhaps the player wouldn't have been immediately traded, but I can confidently predict there wouldn't have been a two-plus-year standoff that often provided a distraction and created the perception that Kerr didn't have full buy-in from the front office.

Bleak Roster Situation

The Warriors have a bleak path forward. The roster was already a player away from major contention entering this season, and now they'll go into an offseason with the possibility of losing Kristaps Porzingis, De'Anthony Melton, Al Horford and Draymond Green while Jimmy Butler and Moses Moody are out for at least half the 2026-27 season with injuries.

If the front office was aggressively floating a chunk of its first-round capital to help this team's 2026-27 chances, things would be more tenable. But instead, the front office seems set on keeping all of its capital unless it's for a player of Giannis Antetokounmpo's caliber.

This front office seems OK with finishing second place for big fish instead of making immediate, practical moves.

Perhaps that's the correct long-term strategy. But for the short team, it sucks for Stephen Curry and whoever coaches this team.

If I'm Kerr, I want assurances that the front office will make a trade for a very good player ASAP, and I doubt the front office would make such assurances.

The Return of Two Timelines

To some degree, every coach has to deal with a two-timelines approach. Every great team eventually has someone it is trying to develop for the future, and developing said player often comes with worse results for the team.

The Warriors were in the height of the two-timeline plan when they had James Wiseman and Kuminga. When they traded Wiseman in February 2023, they were still pretty deep in it, developing Kuminga and Moody and, to a lesser extent, 23-year-old Jordan Poole, who had signed a contract extension but still had the hallmarks of a young player figuring things out.

Then they drafted Brandin Podziemski and traded Poole, which made Podz, Kuminga and Moody their developmental subjects.

And then the Butler trade happened in February 2025, and suddenly Kerr was dealing with less developing than he had in years.

It felt like Moody and Podz had graduated from developing players into effective role players. Butler and Kuminga were redundant, and Kerr wasn't hiding that. Besides, it was Kuminga's fourth season—it was time to stop pretending a star turn was around the corner.

Kerr coached that 2024-25 team with the present in mind.

The Warriors didn't have a 2024 or 2025 first-round pick, so that also contributed to less of a two-timeline approach. Golden State entered this season with a veteran roster looking to contend.

This is a long way to say the two-timeline approach was essentially dead for the last 1.5 seasons.

Now, it will return.

The Warriors will likely be picking 11th in the 2026 NBA draft. They will almost assuredly take a player aged 18 to 20 who needs major developmental reps.

Whoever the Warriors take in the 2027 first round will fall into the same bucket.

Does Kerr want to usher in the new era knowing full well it will probably hurt the end of this era's chances of competing?

The 60-year-old might feel a different coach would be better suited to do that.

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