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Warriors Insider: Defensive Guru Ron Adams Has Ultimate Weapon in Kevin Durant
- Updated: October 6, 2016
OAKLAND, Calif. — Few coaches in the NBA know Kevin Durant the way Ron Adams does. As head coach Steve Kerr’s defensive-minded assistant, Adams was tasked 13 times over the past two seasons with figuring a way to limit Durant’s offensive impact. But he’s also been on the other side, having coached a 20-year-old Durant during his second and third seasons in the league, when the Thunder franchise had just moved to Oklahoma City.
So when Durant announced on July 4 that he had decided to play for the Golden State Warriors, it meant more than just the formation of a superteam. This was something more personal for Adams. This was a chance to reunite with one of his past proteges—someone who had, in the time since they last shared the same practice-court colors, cemented his place as not only one of the NBA’s elite scorers, but one of its most game-altering defenders.
“[Durant] wasn’t always perfect on the court defensively, but he wanted to get better,” Adams told Bleacher Report. “Even in our second year together, he’d come out of the game and come to the bench saying, ‘How’s my defense?'”
That was in 2009, when Adams had already put in 16 seasons as an NBA assistant and coached some of the league’s most dynamic players, including David Robinson, Dennis Rodman and Ray Allen. (Adams even coached Dell Curry for a season in Milwaukee.)
Over that time, Adams became known as one of the league’s top defensive coaches, with his teams always finding a way to stay near the top of the rankings in limiting opponents’ points per game. And few players ever impressed upon Adams such a natural gift for defense as Durant did, especially in those two seasons the young star was under his tutelage.
In Oklahoma City, Adams pushed Durant to take every advantage of his 7’5″ wingspan (which can envelop an opponent’s field of vision and clog passing lanes), to think about rebounding the ball (especially on the defensive end) and to simply play four complete quarters with a continued vigor.
That last tenet is something that is continually on Adams’ mind and one of the reasons he believes the Golden State defense dropped off last year. The Warriors would often dominate for two or three quarters of basketball, enough so that the game wasn’t truly in much doubt, and then take their foot off the gas. It wasn’t just an isolated in-game effect, but a season-long trend that became more pronounced as the months went by:
(Chart courtesy of NBA.com)
The Warriors went from first in defensive rating in 2014-15 down to the outer fringes of the top five, even as they were winning a record number of regular-season games.
For someone focused on the defense, Adams said it’s like “your son or daughter comes home, and they’re getting straight As, and you tell them, ‘You’ve got to do better.'” Since the 2016 NBA Finals loss to the Cleveland Cavaliers, Kerr has also acknowledged the challenges of drilling down on these kinds of shortcomings in the face of such success.
But it’s a new season now, and perhaps no one on the Warriors staff was happier about Durant’s arrival than his old Thunder coach from way back. When Durant arrived at the Warriors practice facility for his introductory press conference, he got high fives and handshakes from everyone but Adams, who went at his old pupil and gave …
