Warszawski: Basketball season never ends for Warriors assistant Ron Adams

Basketball season never ends. Not for Ron Adams.

Oh, sure. Adams and his wife, Leah, spent a couple of days in wine country shortly after the Warriors’ championship parade through downtown Oakland. They made a rare visit to Fresno last weekend and reunited with family and friends over a private dinner party at Bella Rose, the Kingsburg bakery and cafe owned by Adams’ cousin.

But here we are, less than a month after the Warriors raised the Larry O’Brien Trophy as NBA champions, and the 67-year-old assistant is already back in the gym helping coach Golden State’s summer league team.

“I need to kick back more,” Adams says over the phone from Las Vegas, almost wistfully, “but I’ve already started thinking about next year and already started thinking about what we can do better. How we’re going to get more out of certain guys. The process continues.”

While Warriors fans continue to revel in the franchise’s first NBA title in 40 years, Adams has already put 2014-15 in the rearview mirror.

But not entirely out of focus.

Last season was Adams’ 23rd in the NBA as an assistant for seven teams (Spurs, 76ers, Bucks, Bulls, Thunder, Celtics, Warriors) and personnel scout for the Trail Blazers. Before that Adams had a decade-long tenure at Fresno State, both as head coach (1986-90) and an assistant under Boyd Grant. Before that he coached a pro team in Belgium, and before that he coached at his alma mater, Fresno Pacific.

Just about the only thing missing from Adams’ coaching résumé was a trip to the NBA Finals and winning a title.

“The feeling of winning the championship I think becomes more satisfying with time,” Adams says. “When it’s happening, when you’re trying to win a series, you’re in a tiny little bubble and around you there’s this larger bubble of media, fans and friends.

“So when it ends, when you come out of your small bubble and into the larger bubble of everyone else, it’s really kind of surreal. Reading about stuff, watching stuff, listening to the pundits, you can’t do any of that when you’re in the tiny bubble. It’s really kind of a strange process coming out of that tiny bubble once you win.”

During the regular season and playoffs, Adams is primarily responsible for calling and installing the Warriors’ defensive schemes. Coach Steve Kerr has referred to him as his “defensive coordinator.”

During the offseason there’s more emphasis on individual skill development. As such, Adams spends most of his time working with big men Festus Ezeli, James Michael McAdoo and Ognjen Kuzmic.

Ezeli has shown enough flashes, especially during the title-clinching Game 6 against the Cavaliers, to make Adams believe he could develop into an quality starting center.

“I think he’s really going to be a factor, and he’s going to have to be one when I look at the San Antonios,” Adams says. “Our bigs in general have to get better.”

McAdoo spent most of last season in the D League, but with David Lee no longer on the roster there are potential minutes for a backup power forward. McAdoo could fill that role provided he improves his mid-range shooting.

Adams only recently got his first look at 19-year-old Kevon Looney, the Warriors’ first-round pick out of UCLA: “He has a really good feel for the game and does a lot of things effortlessly.”

The trick in developing young players, Adams says, is to teach them the skills they’ll need to succeed in the NBA while getting them to understand a little goes a long way.

“Players tend to overdo it,” he says. “If you look at the great players, historically, they don’t do too much. But what they do, they do well. …

“It’s trying to get players in a small box so they can grow out of that, like a little tree.”

Even MVPs like Stephen Curry have growth potential. Last offseason, Adams challenged Curry to give a more consistent effort on defense. Curry did that, but Adams isn’t completely satisfied.

“Stephen Curry was definitely a lot better defensively,” he says, “but there’s still room for more.”

The same applies to teams that win 67 regular-season games, go 16-5 in the playoffs and return almost the entire roster.

Which explains why Adams is already back coaching and teaching weeks after winning a championship and riding in a parade in front of a million people. A July 24 appearance at the North American Pole Vault Championships in Old Town Clovis (organizer Bob Fraley was Adams’ basketball coach at Laton High) is the only scheduled break in the routine.

“The pundits already have other teams ranked as next season’s favorites, which is interesting,” Adams says. “Even if you’re a good team like we are, the challenge is always to be better.”

This story was originally published July 11, 2015 at 4:46 PM with the headline "Warszawski: Basketball season never ends for Warriors assistant Ron Adams."