Steve Kerr: Swagged!

Steve Kerr is going to be a frequent subject of debate on this site so let me get the ball rolling. My brother and myself were both raised in Cleveland, Ohio. We love the Cavs and we give Steve all praise due unto him for the role he played on the greatest Cavs team ever, from 89-92. He played with Daugherty, Price, Nance, Hot Rod Williams and Craig Ehlo on one of the few teams of that era to stack up with any team in the league, but never be good enough to go all the way. They were like the Jazz squad of the late '90s. And Kerr was a 3 point shooting marvel. The dude was good for anywhere from 1 to... 2 or 3 treys a night. He was a lock. He had a gift.
Since his retirement in 2003 he's been writing for various websites, most notably for Yahoo! Sports. His writing can be described as nothing less than painful. Not his style, although it is patronizing and obnoxious, but his grasp of basketball. It's like not only is he not watching games, he's also not looking at stats. Take his November 29 article about the 5 biggest surprises of the (at that point 15 games old) season. At number 1 he had Biedrins, which I can see. Biedrins has been unbelievable so far for a guy who doesn't really seem to fit all that well in the Nellieball system. And Kerr makes this point well. He then has JR Smith, Emeka Okafor and Luke Walton. And you know what? I'm okay with that. JR Smith is one dimensional, but I can see how Steve would relate to that. Emeka's been outstanding, but his numbers were always pretty outstanding, and his team's not doing any better than they usually do, so I don't see what the surprise is. And Luke has definitely gone from steaming piece of crap to Mike Dunleavy Jr.-ish potential verging on true quality. And that is surprising. But his number 5, Matt Barnes. That tears it. As of the time the article had been written, Barnes had 2 good games in a row, meanwhile Monta Ellis, on his own team, as of Nov. 29 had only scored in single digit once. He had back to back 31 point 7 assist nights and was playing inspired ball. Nellieball even. Now I would rate Monta the bigger surprise, and I also would start to note that every player on Golden State has seen massive (fantasy and real life) value increases due to the Nelson system. It's not that Barnes hasn't seen his value massively inflated, he was released before winding up in Oakland, but the night after Kerr's article Barnes went on a slide. And he didn't come back up for air for a while. Monta's been rock steady in almost every appearance. In a November 17 article about Baron Davis' return he declared oft-injured Davis healthy, finally, a day before the Baron missed 4 of the next 5 games. Not saying Baron isn't having a great year, but he was last year too... before pretty much going down for the year... in February. Kerr's like a soft cheerleaser writing puff pieces. And he's been swagged. We'll be collating data on him and commenting regularly.