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Last July, when Warriors head coach Steve Kerr hired Mike Brown as his lead assistant, some inside the NBA were perplexed.
The biggest question: why Kerr would replace the offensive-minded Luke Walton with Brown, a defensive guru, when Golden State already had Ron Adams — perhaps the NBA’s top defensive assistant — on staff. But after watching LeBron James engineer the biggest Finals comeback in NBA history at the Warriors’ expense, Kerr was subscribing to the philosophy that a team can never have too much defense.