Editor’s note: The following story provides details on gun violence and may be troubling to some readers.
In his role as an NBA player and in his second career as an NBA head coach, Steve Kerr is used to leading the way. His career is a study of applied will against unlikely chances.
He was the 50th player selected in the 1988 draft as a low combo guard who could shoot at the elite level, but he had no other skills in the NBA other than his strength, brain and desire to never back down from battle, no matter how powerless the opponent is. The brilliant legend of the Chicago Bulls Michael Jordan gave him only one piece of evidence in the legendary training camp David against Goliath.
But Kerr took those qualities and defied the odds, making a 14-year career in the NBA in which he was a key member of five different champion teams. He retired as the most accurate scorer with three points in the history of the league (45.4%) and one of the most respected players in the game.
Conversely, as a coach, Kerr has always worked from a position of strength since joining the Golden State Warriors to help launch their dynastic series in 2014-15, but he is making the most of it by helping to introduce a new style of play. in its history – creating a team.
With the Warriors on the verge of closing the Dallas Mavericks, Kerr is on track to direct the Warriors to their sixth NBA Finals, where they will seek their fourth title.
But Kerr is not content with that. It’s not good to just collect your rings and prizes.
He is the son of a father lost to gun violence, and even as his profile grows as the face of one of the most famous franchises in the sport, he uses the platform to speak out in favor of social justice causes he believes he does not. more passionate than the need for the United States to do something about the scourge of gun violence that too routinely leaves a nation with the blood of innocents on its collective hands.
This was never more obvious than when Kerr took the podium on Tuesday, before what turned out to be a loss to the Mavericks.
Pre-match media appearances are usually daily cases where composition and injury issues are resolved.
But Kerr, speaking in Dallas, just a few hours drive from where an 18-year-old with a legally obtained automatic weapon opened fire in a primary school – killing 19 students and two adults – turned on the microphone with a kind of harsh emotion that rarely you see from public figures.
It was appropriate for the moment, as Kerr captured in his trembling, visceral rage the feelings of so many who saw, read, or heard of another mass shooting and wondered: Why?
“When are we going to do something?” Kerr said in a video that quickly went viral. “I’m tired. I’m so tired of getting up here and offering my condolences to the devastated families who are there. I’m so tired. Excuse me. I’m sorry. I’m tired of the moments of silence. Enough.”
In doing so, Kerr borrowed from one of his coaching mentors, San Antonio Spurs head coach Greg Popovich, who used his platform to speak on social issues, creating space for others in the NBA community to follow suit.
But few have done so with the passion Kerr demonstrates, with his boiling outburst striking the perfect tone for so many who feel so helpless and so crazy about what seems to be a problem no one seems determined to solve.
This was not the first time Kerr had used his platform to speak out against gun violence. In comments Tuesday, he mentioned the shooting at a Buffalo grocery store last week that killed 10 and another shooting at a church in Southern California that killed one and injured five others. His comments came just a year after he made a pre-match address with the names of the victims of two mass shootings – in Atlanta and Boulder – shown in the background behind him.
Mass shootings are not a unique problem in the United States – in Canada, the deaths of 22 New Scots in April 2020, six worshipers in the 2017 mosque attacks in Quebec or 14 engineering students at the Ecole Polytechnique in Montreal in 1989, among other incidents, testify to this – but nowhere have mass shootings become more common. Even school shootings have become too common, with Sandy Hook, Parkland, Columbine and now Uvalde entering the lexicon.
Kerr’s passionate comments were not meaningless. In a country with 120 guns per 100 inhabitants (compared to 34 per 100 in Canada) and a deep belief in the gun rights owned by so many, turning mass shootings and or even school shootings into the past has proved very difficult.
But Kerr chose to use his platform to pursue a seemingly achievable goal of passing legislation that would require background checks on gun purchases in the United States. He called on the Republican-controlled Senate, which has so far refused to vote on the bill, first introduced in 2019, and in particular Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, to play a policy game on issues that have consequences for life and death.
“I ask all of you, senators, who refuse to do anything about violence and shootings in schools and shootings in supermarkets – I ask you: ‘Will you put your own desire for power before the lives of our children and the elderly and our clergy? Kerr asked.
So far, the answer has been obvious, as the shooting escalates, tears flow and anger rages, but nothing changes.
It is sad and tragic that this time it is difficult to imagine anything if the past is a reference point.
But Kerr is used to doing amazing things against big odds. His more than 30-year career in the NBA is proof.
Americans – and anyone from all over who is interested in gun violence – are lucky to still want to be that man.
Add Comment