At times, Steve Kerr moves like a mad scientist masquerading as the Warriors’ head coach.

Last season, Kerr used 37 different starting lineups, experimenting with the roster top to bottom, searching for the right formula to give Golden State a shot down the stretch of the regular season and in the playoffs. The lineup of Stephen Curry, Brandin Podziemski, Moses Moody, Jimmy Butler and Draymond Green was their most used (and most successful) lineup. It was that same lineup that helped the Warriors finish the regular season on a 20-7 run.

When Butler went down with a tailbone contusion in Game 2 of their first-round series against the Houston Rockets, Kerr leaned on his lineup tinkering and experimenting from the regular season to push them through the series, and it worked.

At the dawn o

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