Reigning NBA Champions Golden State Warriors raise first banner in training facility

OAKLAND — Upon taking over as coach last season, Steve Kerr ordered some changes around the Warriors practice facility.

There had been a mural listing the name of every Warriors player to make an All-Star team. Kerr had it removed and explained that individual honors would no longer be part of the decor.

A wall display saluting Stephen Curry’s 3-point record? Gone That’s not why the Warriors were practicing.

Kerr’s home renovation project wrapped up Friday with a new wall-hanging — a 2014-15 NBA championship banner. It was unfurled in a private ceremony for team employees in advance of training camp opening Sept. 29.

In a nod to the team’s “Strength in Numbers” motto, the name of every player was stitched around the border of the banner, in alphabetical order, from Barbosa to Thompson.

“With everything we were trying to accomplish, we knew that we needed every piece of the puzzle to make it happen,” reserve guard Shaun Livingston said Friday. “And in the end, that’s kind of how it played out.”

The Warriors will unveil another championship banner, at Oracle Arena, when their regular season opens Oct. 27 against the New Orleans Pelicans. On that night, team owners Joe Lacob and Peter Guber will present the Warriors their championship rings for finishing off the Cleveland Cavaliers in Game 6 of the NBA Finals.

 

By the end of that series, that “Strength in Numbers” motto proved such a perfect fit for the self-sacrificing team that Livingston approached a front-office executive to ask, essentially, “Who are the ad wizards who came up with that one?”

As it turns out, it was a marketing ace named … Steve Kerr.

Chip Bower, the Warriors’ chief marketing officer, recalled Friday that the business side invited the new coach into a preseason meeting to talk about branding. They wanted to know Kerr’s vision for the franchise before pitching a message to the public.

“And it literally just rolled off the tip of his tongue,” Bower recalled. “He said, ‘Look, we’re all about having strength in numbers.’ ”

Kerr, channeling his inner Don Draper, was just getting started.

“This is about the first player on the team being as important as the last guy off the bench,” he continued. “That’s what we’re going to need to be champions. … Doing that takes a collaborative effort from everyone, not just on the floor, but within the organization.”

The marketing department, sold on the concept, used the “Strength in Numbers” phrase sparingly during the regular season, then pushed it hard at playoff time with T-shirts and other merchandise.

That’s when it got Livingston’s attention.

“It’s so authentic,” said Livingston, a 10-year veteran. “I’ve been around, so I’ve seen a lot of slogans that teams use to get fans behind the movement. But this actually was real. It was like a surreal slogan. It just fit our team so well.”

Livingston credited Kerr for coaching the way he talked, getting career-long starters such as Andre Iguodala and David Lee to buy into bench roles. Both players wound up playing pivotal minutes during the title run. Iguodola, who didn’t start all season until Game 4 against Cleveland, wound up winning the Finals MVP trophy.

“For them to take a back seat and say, ‘I’ll do what’s best for the team,’ allows everybody else to buy in,” Livingston said. “If it was a 13th a 14th guy, or a journeyman like myself, it doesn’t have the same impact.”

The message apparently extended to the front office. The ceremony at the practice facility Friday wasn’t for players. It was for employees ranging from the facilities engineer to ticket executives to the youth basketball manager. In all, several dozen staffers took the floor as the banner was unfurled.

Raymond Ridder, the vice president of communications who led the ceremony, closed things by using a favorite line of general manager Bob Myers: “It’s amazing what you can accomplish when no one worries about who gets the recognition.”

 

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