First as a player, then as a coach, Steve Kerr has had his share of magnificent postseason maneuvers. He added another this weekend, a series spanning about 48 hours.

After taking a 3-1 lead in their best-of-seven playoff series with the Rockets, the Warriors tumbled in Game 5 on Wednesday in Houston and came home Friday to coast to victory in Game 6 – only to get spanked off the Chase Center floor.

Kerr went to work immediately afterward, planting two seeds for his team to cultivate.

“No. 1 was coming into the locker room right after Game 6 and saying, ‘That’s on me; I didn’t have y’all ready to play,’” Draymond Green recalled. “So, the accountability and leadership. And No. 2, just the belief.”

Green was saying this to reporters late Sunday night, in the glow of a 103-89 triumph at Toyota Center that sent Golden State into the Western Conference semifinals. He was lauding the head coach he has joined in battle for 11 years.

The coach who late Friday night and into Saturday, with his team one loss away from NBA sports infamy, had turned inward, scouring everything at his cerebral and emotional disposal. What could Kerr say or do to avoid being the coach of a team that twice took a 3-1 lead in a postseason series only to stumble in Games 5, 6 and 7.

Kerr wanted to ensure he had done all he could to get the Warriors ready before Game 7 tipped off on Sunday. He met with his assistants to formulate a game plan and unveiled it Saturday evening after the team arrived in Houston.

Trusting that Curry and Butler would be in the right frame of mind, much of Kerr focused his attention on Green, whose low-impact series bottomed out in Game 6. If Draymond couldn’t find the best of himself in Game 7, the Warriors likely would be returning to the Bay Area, season over, scratching their heads.

Kerr was pleased to see Green take the floor Saturday night, offering a mea culpa for his Game 6 performance. Draymond had “heart-to-heart” conversations with members of his inner circle, who provided unflinching feedback that set him straight.

“He owned up to losing his poise in Game 6, and I agreed with him,” Kerr said. “I thought the flagrant foul (he committed) four minutes into the game was a tone-setter, and he knew it. He talked to the group last night and said, ‘I’ve got to be poised, and I have to be better, and we’re going to come in here tomorrow and get it done.’”

That wasn’t enough for Kerr, though, so he took Green’s temperature during the team’s Sunday morning shootaround.

“He told me,” Draymond said, ‘You’re one of the most competitive people I’ve ever been around, and one of the greatest leaders I’ve been around, so it’s my job to let you know what your leadership should be tonight. How you need to lead, what that needs to look like for tonight. It’s my job to prepare you for that, my job to get you ready emotionally to play.’

“It’s one of the better conversations we’ve ever had, and we’ve had some great ones. But that’s one I’ll remember for the rest of my life.”

Green responded six hours later with by far his best game of the series, leading a defense that stifled the Rockets. He also contributed 16 points, six rebounds, five assists and two blocks to finish a team-best plus-18 over 40 minutes.

“His emotional stability tonight, just his poise from the start, set a great tone,” Kerr said.

On the run-up to the game, Kerr resisted any temptation to pull Buddy Hield from the starting lineup. The veteran guard totaled four points on 2-of-6 in Game 5 and was scoreless on 0-of-4 shooting in Game 6. He was hurting more than helping.

So, there was Hield, joining Stephen Curry, Brandin Podziemski, Jimmy Butler III and Green in the starting lineup for Game 7. Kerr trusted Buddy in a game that, if it went sour, would be remembered as an epic Warriors failure.

Hield scored 22 points of Golden State’s 51 points in the first half and finished with a game-high 33. He was marvelous.

“I never wavered on starting Buddy,” Kerr said. “The lineup that we started tonight has been by far our best five-man unit in this series, so I knew I was going to stay with Buddy.”

Kerr junked his usual rotations and substitution patterns, letting Curry (46 minutes) and Butler (45) play until their tongues met their chins – because they wouldn’t have it any other way. This meant too much to them. And to Kerr.

After the Warriors committed only three turnovers in the first half, implementing a facet emphasized in the game plan, they pushed the lead to 15 in the first minute of the second half before veering into a series of empty possessions that brought Kerr off the bench.

A turnover by Butler led to a transition dunk that brought the Rockets within nine. Timeout Warriors. Three consecutive shots by Podziemski, the last mindless, led to another transition bucket that trimmed Golden State’s advantage to five. Timeout Warriors.

After Jonathan Kuminga misses on consecutive possessions led to a Houston triple that made it a three-point game with 2:48 left in the quarter, Kerr called yet another timeout. The Warriors listened, went on a 12-2 run over the next four minutes and closed it out.

Gone were all the anxieties that come with playing a Game 7 on the road against a team that had shown no sign of capitulation. The Warriors would have to take it, and they did.

“I’ll tell y’all, Steve is so calm in these situations,” Green said, recalling Friday night. “Everybody gets rattled, and he just be like this (chilling). But when you have a coach that walks in like that, it settles everybody down.

“And, obviously, he’s the best in the business when it comes to game plans this time of year.”

Download and follow the Dubs Talk Podcast