OAKLAND, Calif. — Coach Steve Kerr expects the Golden State Warriors to meet as a group in the coming days to decide whether to visit President Donald Trump’s White House as NBA champions.
General manager Bob Myers said the Warriors have had discussions with the White House, and Golden State owner Joe Lacob also will be involved in the decision.
“I don’t know what we’re going to do,” Myers said. “It’s not as clear as, well I assume some people think it is and some people think it isn’t. So, from our opinion, my opinion, it deserves a proper forum. It deserves the right amount of thought, and so when we make the decision we at least put in the right amount of time to make it.”
Stephen Curry has been outspoken about not attending, saying at media day Friday, “I don’t want to go … my beliefs stay the same.”
“Just like our country, every opinion counts and matters. Based on the conversations we’ve had in the past and what people have said to the media, to each other, I know pretty much where everybody kind of stands on it,” Curry said. “But we want to respect the opportunity to represent not only ourselves, our own beliefs, but our organization because we’re obviously in this position because we won a championship and we did something special together. So for us to just really take the time to understand the magnitude of this decision and the right thing to do, the right way to go about it is important.”
NBA Finals MVP Kevin Durant has taken the same stand.
“It’s going to be tough to change my mind,” Durant said.
Kerr knows his team will have an honest conversation about what is best regarding the White House trip.
“We haven’t had a chance to be together. This summer everybody gets scattered, so it’s just important for everybody to express their views, not only players but coaches and management and ownership, and we haven’t had that opportunity,” Kerr said. “So it’s not anything we’ve really given a ton of thought but we will meet over the next couple of days and decide what we want to do.”
Curry said a decision to not visit the White House would only be a first step.
“By acting and not going, hopefully that will inspire some change when it comes to what we tolerate in this country and what is accepted and what we turn a blind eye to,” Curry said. “It’s not just the act of not going. There are things you have to do on the back end to actually push that message into motion.”
Kerr, who missed 11 games during the playoffs dealing with debilitating symptoms stemming from back surgery in 2015, also said he is encouraged about his improving health ahead of the opening practice of training camp Saturday.
“I feel better,” Kerr said. “I’m not 100 percent but I’m on a good path and I’m confident I will be 100 percent at some point, hopefully sooner than later. … As Vin Scully once said, we’re all day to day.”
Durant, meanwhile, only briefly addressed his series of critical, now-deleted posts about his former Thunder coach and franchise on Twitter, for which he already had apologized - though teammate Draymond Green, who has had his own social media snafus, said “I laughed in his face.”
“I moved past it, I spoke on it and look forward to starting camp tomorrow,” Durant said.
Myers and Kerr each spoke with Durant and Kerr said he shared an embarrassing moment from his playing days.
“I thought he handled it well,” Myers said. “We all have our moments that we might regret and say something we feel we shouldn’t have said. At that point, when it’s done, you own it, what you did, you apologize. I like to apologize to people directly, which he did, and you move on, and you learn.”
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