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SAN ANTONIO — The difference between Steve Kerr and his top assistant Mike Brown might have slipped beneath the radar. In the deciding stretch of Game 3, the clash in their coaching philosophies was on display.

You may not have noticed. But the players did.

“Sometimes, it needs to happen that way,” Draymond Green said with a sneaky smile when asked about Brown’s approach.

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Warriors’ Steve Kerr says NBA needs more Black head coaches With 5:15 left in the third, and the Warriors’ up nine, Spurs forward LaMarcus Aldridge fouled Warriors’ star Kevin Durant on a drive to the basket. It was San Antonio’s fourth foul, which meant every foul the Spurs committed for the rest of the quarter resulted in Warriors free throws. So Brown put the ball in the hands of Durant, who led the team in free throw attempts despite missing 20 games. David West, playing center, came to the top to set a screen for Durant. It led to a layup for Durant

Brown ran the play again. Durant walked the ball up the court, West set up the screen. The result was another layup by Durant.

Brown ran the play again. Durant got a 3-pointer out of it. All total, the Warriors ran the pick-and-roll with Durant and West five consecutive possessions, resulting in 13 points by Durant and a 98-80 lead. On top of that, the Warriors followed by going away from the pick-and-roll for the final seven possessions of the third quarter and totaled just two points.

So what’s the difference in approaches? Brown, who coached LeBron James and Kobe Bryant, believes in milking his superstars. Kerr does, too. They just do it in different ways.

Brown puts the ball in the hands of his best players and allows them to improvise. Kerr prefers to milk the skills and threat of his stars for the benefit of the whole by folding them into the system of motion and ball movement. In Game 3, at the perfect time, Brown’s philosophy was employed and the Spurs were done.

For starters, this an illustration of how Kerr has empowered Brown. Throughout the Warriors’ 11 straight playoff wins, Brown readily and repeatedly directs the credit to Kerr, whom he talks to regularly before and after games. Kerr is still involved though he is not able to coach.

But Brown isn’t merely a puppet. He has the freedom to lean on his instincts and experience within the confines of Kerr’s system. He isn’t creating new plays, but he can ride one or two to the bone if sees fit. It may even be stuff he and Kerr talked about, or per Kerr instructions. But the timing, the frequency, the options are up to Brown in the moment.

This is potentially huge, with championship implications. The Warriors are a well-oiled enough machine they can run Kerr’s system without much interference. But in the moments they need to deviate, Brown believes in player over plan. And with a roster this talented, the easy answer might be just to give the ball to a superstar and let him cook.

“Especially if we’re scoring,” Stephen Curry said. “Obviously if things aren’t going (well), we need to try something different. But yeah, this is the NBA. We’ve got talented scorers, like we talk about all the time. If you’ve got the opportunity to do that, keep it simple and just let guys work and do what they do during a stretch of the game, that’s huge.”

Kerr tends to shy away from that type of basketball even though the Warriors now have two players who are really good at it. If he’s more open to it now, and Brown has a good sense for when to push that button, the Warriors should have an answer for what happened to them in last year’s Finals. Because that’s what Cleveland did: ride LeBron James and Kyrie Irving.

The Cavaliers put the ball in their best players’ hands and let them be great, and both pulled off something legendary, overpowering the Warriors’ “Strength in Numbers” modus operandi.

“Let guys work” in the NBA typically means pick-and-roll, isolation, or post-ups. The Warriors don’t typically roll that way. It has had a way of muffling their own individual greatness, namely that of Curry, in the past. But such offense also tends to promote the other not-involved players to be stagnant and, eventually, makes the offense more defendable. That contradicts Kerr’s philosophy, which is how the Warriors got here.

Kerr’s approach is how the Warriors jumped from 12th in the NBA in offensive rating in Mark Jackson’s last year to second in Kerr’s first year — followed by two straight seasons boasting the No. 1 offense in the league. It’s an attractive style of play that involves everyone, which goes a long way to promoting good chemistry. They spent the first half of the season indoctrinating Durant, who came from an isolation-heavy offense, with the Warriors’ style of play.

The Warriors ranked last in the NBA during the regular season with an average of 12.1 pick-and-rolls per game. Three of the best teams in the league — Warriors, Spurs and Cavaliers — ranked in the bottom 10.

The Warriors also ranked 26th in isolation plays. The Spurs, owners of the second-best record in the NBA, ranked 27th. But most teams with dynamic talents ranked in the top 10 in isolation.

LeBron James’ Cavaliers (first), the Chris Paul and Blake Griffin’s Clippers (second), James Harden’s Rockets (fifth), Damian Lillard and C.J. McCollum’s Blazers (eighth), Russell Westbrook’s Thunder (ninth), Paul George’s Pacers (10th), John Wall and Bradley Beal’s Wizards (11th) — one way or another, the NBA trend is to milk the best players.

The Warriors tend to do a decent amount of their isolation out of pick-and-rolls, usually when they get a big man switched onto Curry. But often, even that match-up is then filtered through the Warriors’ series of passes and screens and cuts.

But unlike the regular season, where the Warriors’ unselfishness torments defenses, the playoffs favor superstars. The deeper teams go into the playoffs, the better the defenses are, the more greatness becomes required. The system of involving everyone, against great coaching, can end up with lesser players being forced to make a play at the most undesirable of times.

Twice in the NBA Finals, Kerr’s philosophy worked against him. In 2015, the Cavaliers built a 2-1 lead in part because the Warriors took the ball out of Curry’s hands. They put it back and the Warriors ran off three straight to win the title.

In 2016, Curry was hobbled and couldn’t carry the load like normal. But the “Strength in Numbers” approach came back to bite Kerr. Instead of leaning on his best players, he went deep into the bench, most notably in Game 7, and those precious minutes of inferiority proved to be the difference in the close games.

Kerr leans on ball movement and execution to lubricate a stalling offense. It has worked wonders for the franchise. But against great defenses, Kerr’s tactics aided in muffling Curry, the Warriors’ best player. Once, he gives the ball up, they refuse to let him get it back and force someone else to make a play. Every cut has to be hard, every screen solid and every pass crisp for the cracks in the defense to open. Otherwise, the Warriors are left feeding the player the defense wants them to feed.

Harrison Barnes was the open player the Cavaliers yielded in the 2016 Finals. He went 5 for 32 over the last three games and the Warriors blew a 3-1 lead.

Even with that experience, the Warriors still rank 15th among the 16 playoff teams in isolations per game and in pick-and-roll possessions. The Warriors are able to get away with it because a significant chunk of their offense comes in transition. That’s where their stars are free to work. The Warriors led the NBA in transition possessions, and are second only to the Washington Wizards in these playoffs.

Oddly enough, since they don’t have low-post specialists, the closest Kerr’s offense gets to milking stars is through the post. The Warriors rank seventh among the 16 playoffs teams in post-ups per game (7.3). Durant, Klay Thompson and Shaun Livingston are the usual suspects to get action down low, usually after a series of passes and cuts lead to a shorter player defending them.

When the game slows down, as usual in the playoffs, that takes away a big portion of the Warriors’ offensive productivity. That puts extra pressure on the half-court offense, and the successful execution of screens and cuts and interior passing. The addition of Durant has made Kerr’s offense that much more potent. And no defense yet has put them on the brink and in search of answers on offense. Perhaps only Cleveland can.

If that time comes, Brown is from the school of let-star-be-stars. And Kerr, who discusses all of this with Brown, is clearly fine with Brown riding the Warriors’ stable of horses situationally.

What Game 3 of the Western Conference Finals seems to point to was the Warriors’ increased possibilities.

Will Brown be open to isolating on Cleveland point guard Kyrie Irving, a notoriously poor defender, in a way Kerr didn’t? Will the Warriors ride the pick-and-roll, and their several possible variations of it, and force the Cavaliers to stop the Warriors’ best players? Will Curry be a magnet to draw defenders and benefit his teammates, or will he be the primary playmaker?

If Kerr has evolved, learning the lessons from past shortcomings, and is willing to lean on Brown’s read for when to lean on a star, that could be a game-changer.

This conversation has been continuous in the Warriors’ inner circle, players included. All season, the trick has been trying to find that delicate balance between playing the style of basketball they know works while figuring out when and how to maximize the strengths of their elite scorers.

“I think we’re still at our best when we’re simple about what we’re doing,” Curry said. “Whether it’s pick-and-roll and you’ve got everybody spaced. You’ve got shooters where they need to be. You’ve got the dive man where he needs to be with space to put pressure on the rim. You’ve got a ball-handler playmaker with it that can come off and shoot it, get a bucket. Sometimes it doesn’t need to be more complex than that. We’ve got the awareness that, that needs to happen.”