Coach Steve Kerr confesses Warriors are a fading dynasty, apologizes to Draymond Green

As the Warriors battle through the season, Dub Nation wrestles with whether chaos is the price of one last run.

There's a specific kind of exhaustion that only comes from carrying something precious up a mountain you've already climbed. Warriors head coach Steve Kerr knows this feeling better than almost anyone alive. He's summited before: five times as a player, four as a coach. And here he is again, December 2025, watching his team sit at 15-15, feeling the familiar ache in his legs that says the climb is getting steeper while the oxygen gets thinner.

Monday night against Orlando, something broke in the Warriors’ home win. The footage shows Draymond walking away from the bench mid-timeout, disappearing into the tunnel while his team tried to protect a lead.

Then again maybe something didn't break at all. Maybe it just bent the way championship cores have been bending since the beginning of basketball time, and Kerr recognized the sound because he's heard it before. In Chicago when he caught Michael Jordan's fist during practice. In Oakland when Draymond torched Kevin Durant on live television. In that 2016 locker room in OKC when he and Draymond went at it during the 73-win season. Maybe that footage of Draymond storming away is just another testament of the emotional overdrive required to sustain a dynasty.

What the footage doesn’t show is Kerr doing the calculus in real time: How much rope does this thing have left? The Coach discussed his relationship with Draymond while confessing: “We are a fading dynasty.”

"Monday night was not my finest hour, and that was a time I needed to be calm in the huddle," Kerr said after Golden State's practice at Chase Center on Wednesday, about 24 hours before the Warriors will take on the Dallas Mavericks on Christmas Day. "I regret my actions in that exchange. I apologized to [Green]. He apologized to me. We both apologized to the team.

These things, they happen -- especially when you get two incredibly competitive people like Dray and me.

There's a long history of that here because we understand each other and I understand his power. There are four banners out there, and obviously a lot of people played important roles in that, but I've said this before and I truly believe it: I don't think we have any without him," Kerr said. "That's how much he impacts winning. So his ability to channel that passion, that emotion, that raw rage that he has is a key component to what makes us successful. And what I said about the other night, I didn't channel my own raw emotion and rage, of which there is plenty.

That sounded like a man who knows the climb isn’t over, but also knows his legs aren’t what they used to be. What makes Kerr different is that he isn’t guessing. He lived The Last Dance as a role player. He knows what it feels like when the ending is already written in pencil and every game is both a fight and a farewell. He knows pressure, too. After his father was murdered when Steve was a youth, basketball was the place where he could channel his energy. Years later, he caught a pass from Jordan with a championship on the line and didn’t blink to seal a championship. That’s where Kerr learned that chaos and greatness often share the same address.

He's not guessing about what it takes. He lived it when Phil Jackson handed out those laminated booklets in 1997 with "The Last Dance" printed on the cover. He knows what it feels like when an aging fighting champion sits between rounds bloodied on the stool, staring at his opponent through swollen eyes, a swollen-lipped smirk plastered on his face with the scorecards in doubt.

But here’s where the view shifts from the bench to the stands. Let’s talk about the fanbase for a second. Dub Nation didn't just show up when the championships started rolling in. We were here for the We Believe Warriors. We were here through the Chris Cohan years when the franchise was a punchline. We were here before Steve Kerr, before Draymond Green, even before Steph Curry became Steph Curry.

So when Draymond walks off the bench during a timeout in a game the Warriors desperately need, when his stat line reads more turnovers and fouls than made baskets, let’s not be shocked when the murmurs rise as folks ask the question that's been building for years now: Is this still worth it?

I know what Steve Kerr's answer is. "My No. 1 goal, honestly, is for him to finish his career as a Warrior with us fighting, metaphorically, not literally but fighting and competing together, until we're both gone." That's love. That's a coach who's been in the foxhole with his player for 12 years and four championships, who understands exactly what Draymond brings because he's seen it deliver banners.

But Dub Nation doesn't have Steve Kerr's foxhole perspective. We have the view from the stands, where every game feels like it could be the one where folks look back and say, "That's when we wasted Steph Curry's prime." When Draymond’s night tilts toward ejections and blowups, Dub Nation isn’t judging legacy. It’s about math. Quiet, panicked math. Every possession matters. Every Steph minute feels borrowed time as he is on the back half of his thirties and still bending reality. He’s still pulling defenders out to half court and still capable of detonating an arena. But for how long?

So when Draymond wobbles, it doesn’t feel symbolic. It feels expensive. I’ve seen the comments all over the interwebs and I’ve heard the conversations in person. The question is becoming not can we win with Draymond? But can we afford nights when he gives us less than everything? The last two games (he was ejected the game prior) the answer was yes. However I don’t think this Warriors team is wired to play without him over the long haul, despite many vocal people to the contrary.

Now allow me to propose a gold blooded question hiding underneath all of it: What if this—the tension, the volatility, the emotional tax—isn’t a bug?

What if it’s the engine? What if the Warriors were never meant to be clean or calm? What if the chaos, the edge, the uncomfortable trust in combustible people is exactly what made them great in the first place? That somewhere under the fouls and the exits and the frustration is the Draymond who organizes defenses and bends games to his will. That Steph still has one more eruption left. That this core, albeit flawed, aging, and fraying can still align long enough to scare the league one more time.

The Warriors have 52 games to answer that question. Dub Nation isn’t cheering blindly anymore. We’re watching with narrowed eyes and held breath, needing everything this team can give because there’s nothing left to waste.

And still… we’re here.

Because if the chaos was always part of the formula,
maybe believing through the fatigue is too.