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CLEVELAND — OK, I’m back in this town for the first time since last June, there’s an entire additional off-day tomorrow before Game 3 at Quicken Loans Arena, and I’m still thinking about what we saw Sunday night in Game 2.

Basically, we saw the physical and real-time manifestation of what Steve Kerr told me last week, when I asked him if he for sure will coach again.



“Hell yeah.”

Game 2 — Kerr’s return to the sidelines after missing the previous 11 playoff games — was a Hell Yeah Moment for Kerr, for the Warriors, and for everybody wondering how much he loves coaching and how much this franchise coalesces around his intellect, humor, creativity and yes, his ferocious competitive fire.

It’s not that things were bogging down under acting coach Mike Brown — 11-0 of course proves that the Warriors’ machine was running quite smoothly with Kerr in the background while he was ailing and Brown on the sidelines.

But that 11-0 happened because Kerr’s architecture is so sound, because he and Brown work so well together, because Brown was so deft at blending his style into Kerr’s game plan, and because the Warriors also have great, great players.

OK, that last part is pretty important. Most important. But this all Curry/Durant/Draymond/Klay talent could’ve gotten fouled up during Kerr’s time off if the leadership was confused and the voices were conflicting.

That didn’t happen. And Kerr’s return — and the Warriors’ run-away victory to take a 2-0 lead over Cleveland in the Finals — was the reassertion of his will, leading it all.

I have mentioned this many times, but I’ll say it again, especially now: The most under-noted part of Kerr’s leadership success is his raging will to win, to compete, and, if necessary, to jump into the middle of it all.

That’s why I can’t believe people are still wondering if Warriors management maybe pushed Kerr back to the sideline.

WHAT? If anything, there was some thought Kerr should take the playoffs off and make sure he gets right for next season, because the long view was the most realistic view, frankly.

But Kerr pushed and pushed to get back for Game 2 and in fact had some thought about getting back for Game 1.

He loves coaching. He’s one of the best in the world at it. And he definitely wanted back in for the ebbs and floes of this particular series, because Kerr knows as well as anybody that if you give LeBron one little opening, he can win three straight games and douse your dreams.

So I’m not sure what else Kerr could do to demonstrate that he intends to coach the Warriors for as long as he can, through pain if need be, and he just did it Sunday.

* I’m seeing a lot of monster extrapolations for the Warriors’ potential payroll out into the future if they keep everybody together, and no doubt the future is filled with luxury-tax payments for Joe Lacob and Peter Guber, who have always said they’d go deep into the tax if the roster merited it.

And this roster absolutely merits it.

But there’s one slight miscalculation in all excess estimations, IMO: Who says the Warriors have to keep everybody for the long-term?

The base of this is Stephen Curry, Kevin Durant, Draymond Green and Klay Thompson at least for several more years, and maybe shorter-term with Andre Iguodala, and the Warriors owners will do everything to keep all of them.

But those are the only $10M+ players that are mandatory keepers, and you could say Iguodala’s timespan as a mandatory keeper, currently at age 33 now, might run out somewhere around next season.

So no doubt just by re-signing Curry and Durant to their deserved super-max deals (Curry this July, Durant probably next July when he can get the monster deal without needing to fit under the GSW salary cap line), the Warriors will be into those two for upwards of $80M combined annually into the future.

Also, Draymond Green is owed $16.4M next season, $17.5M in 2018-19 and $18.5M in 2019-20 before he becomes a free agent in July 2020.

And Klay Thompson is owed $17.8M next season and $19M in 2018-19 before he becomes a free agent in July 2019.

–Those are the irreplaceable pieces. But that adds up to about $130M or so per year for those players over the next several seasons. That’s a lot, and it will take the Warriors into the luxury tax, but for everybody else, they can go much cheaper.

And the Warriors have already shown that they can be fairly cut-throat in evaluating the middle-to-bottom of their roster.

They ditched Harrison Barnes, Andrew Bogut, Festus Ezeli and several bench players in a blink when they could get Durant, and they’ve been ready to do similar things at various times for other players.

I don’t want to be mean here, but they’re not going even deeper into luxury tax — and incurring massive penalties — just to pay Ian Clark what some other team might pay him.

They can find a player who does what Clark is doing now at a small fraction of $6M or whatever the market rate, and they already have Patrick McCaw partially filling that role at a bargain price, anyway.

That is just the way NBA economics works.

For example, the Warriors know Iguodala is incredibly important to this mix, but any calculation that has them paying him $18M+ per is way, way too high, IMO.

The Warriors love Shaun Livingston, but any calculation that has them paying him $10M+ next season is too high.

Also: They are not getting in a bidding war for ANY of their current centers. They put the center mix together on the fly, for the minimum, and I am sure they believe they can do something similar next season–and next season’s rotation probably will include last July’s No. 1 pick Damian Jones.

I’ll take a more thorough look at this after the season, but let’s just say that the Warriors will bring back their core… but beyond that, every non-core player might end up elsewhere if the price is too high, and any assumption other than that is slightly off-base.

* Because I know there’s a lot of fury out there when I do this, here’s the top 2017 postseason cumulative plus-minus totals updated through Game 2 of the Finals…

1. Stephen Curry +256

2. Draymond Green +214

3. Klay Thompson +202

4. Kevin Durant +181

5. LeBron James +169

6. Kevin Love +163

7. Kyrie Irving +122

8. Tristan Thompson +105

9. Zaza Pachulia +104

10. J.R. Smith +94

* Top cumulative plus-minus totals in the two NBA Finals games so far…

1. Stephen Curry +41

2. Kevin Durant +37

3. Klay Thompson +32

4. Draymond Green +26

5. Andre Iguodala +23

Cleveland’s main plus-minus totals (players with more than 40 minutes total)…

-Kyle Korver -11 (in 43 minutes)

-Kevin Love -19 (in 64 minutes)

-J.R. Smith -30 (in 42 minutes)

-Tristan Thompson -31 (in 44 minutes)

-LeBron James -33 (in 79 minutes)

-Kyrie Irving -34 (in 75 minutes)

* The Warriors’ top plus-minus players in last year’s Finals loss (minimum 70 minutes)…

1. Leandro Barbosa +38 (in 79 minutes)

2. Draymond Green +23 (in 240 minutes)

3. Andre Iguodala +19 (in 239 minutes)

4. Shaun Livingston +13 (in 148 minutes)

5. Stephen Curry -7 (in 246 minutes)

6. Harrison Barnes -32 (in 222 minutes)

7. Klay Thompson -43 (in 247 minutes)

Cleveland’s top plus-minus players in last year’s Finals victory…

1. Tristan Thompson +40 (in 225 minutes)

2. Kyrie Irving +33 (in 273 minutes)

3. LeBron James +26 (in 292 minutes)

4. J.R. Smith +26 (in 261 minutes)

5. Kevin Love +11 (in 158 minutes)

I’ll just note that the Tristan Thompson numbers are stark — last year he was Cleveland’s top plus-minus guy and was immensely important (and averaged 32 minutes)… and this year Thompson has been a large drag, and has only been on the court for 21.5 minutes per.

* Finally, it was very classy of LeBron James to stop by Kerr before the game and give him a nice hug.

Kerr definitely appreciated that and after the game said that LeBron also sent him a very thoughtful text a few days ago.