The Golden State Warriors have had an outstanding start to the season, making their decision to fire Mark Jackson and replace him with Steve Kerr a smart one so far.

Joe Lacob cited Jackson's unwillingness to hire better assistant coaches as one of the reasons for his dismissal.

"Right now, (Kerr) looks great," Lacob said at the Western Association of Venture Capitalists/National Venture Capital Association luncheon Wednesday. "I think he will be great. And he did the one big thing that I wanted more than anything else from Mark Jackson he just wouldn't do, in all honesty, which is hire the very best.

"Carte blanche. Take my wallet. Do whatever it is to get the best assistants there are in the world. Period. End of story. Don't want to hear it. And (Jackson's) answer . . . was, 'Well, I have the best staff.' No you don't. And so with Steve, very, very different."

Lacob praised associate head coach Alvin Gentry and assistant coach Ron Adams, whom Kerr hired for their experience. Lacob said he thought at the time when he hired Jackson that the key for an inexperienced coach who he said "didn't know X's and O's, really" was to hire the right staff around him.

"You can't have a staff underneath you that isn't that good," Lacob said. "And if you're going to get better, you've got to have really good assistants. You've got to have people that can be there to replace you. We all know this from all of our companies. It's . . . Management 101. A lot of people on the outside couldn't understand it when we (fired Jackson)."