By Jack McCallum



After Golden State head coach Steve Kerr took the job, he walked into an immediate personnel dilemma: Should the team trade shooting guard Klay Thompson for Minnesota’s Kevin Love? (Thompson and Love, incidentally, had been teammates on the 2001 Lake Oswego [Oregon] Lakers all-star team that just missed a berth in the Little League World Series, Love an overpowering pitcher, Thompson a lithe shortstop.) At this point, remember that while Stephen Curry and Thompson had shown promise, they had not yet blossomed into a championship backcourt, while Love, a scorer and rebounder at 6-foot-10, was a consensus top-ten player.



Everyone within the Warriors organization has his own story about what happened. Jerry West and Travis Schlenk were both firmly against the deal, the former even threatening to quit if it went through. West loved Thompson. Chris Mullin, then with ESPN, was at a Thompson predraft workout and remembers West walking onto the floor...