Scott Howard-Cooper - Steve Kerr: A Life

To Jordan, Taylor, and Nora

Steve Kerr and Bob Myers projected gratitude in the strangest place and at the strangest time, on the court as the opponent began celebrating a title at their expense and minutes after the 20182019 Warriors season had come to such a blunt-force conclusion that it was easy to imagine their 2020 playoff aspirations extinguished as well. Golden State had been that disfigured. The defending champions in one night were dethroned at home by the Raptors, and star shooting guard Klay Thompson tore a knee ligament that would sideline him for much if not all of the next season, one game after star small forward Kevin Durant ruptured an Achilles tendon that would likely cost him all of 20192020, if he returned at all as a free agent. The franchise so came apart in the series that a minority owner had earlier shoved Raptors guard Kyle Lowry after Lowry crashed into the front row near him chasing a loose ball.

Late on June 13, 2019, Kerr was emotionally wrung out after five playoff marathons in as many seasons as a coach, more than by the loss that euthanized a cursed Finals. He would soon head to the home locker room, visit with Commissioner Adam Silver, and ask if the Warriors could skip next season and instead spend the months riding bikes and sipping wine in Italy. First, though, near the vacated Golden State bench, Kerr and General Manager Myers stopped to hug. Their embrace came across more as appreciating their good fortune than as consoling each other for the basketball agony flooding the operation. They may have been near tears in the brief conversation as Thompson headed to the hospital and the severity of the injury became evident, but the close friends also appeared to share a moment of appreciation as they conceded that the run as they knew it had come to an end.

For all his championship riches, Kerr through the years mostly revealed himself in adversity and defeat. There was the superhuman composure the first game back after the assassination of his father, the knee injury that could have ended his career in 1986, and his struggles to stick in the NBA. Even his greatest starring roles as a playerthe Chicago 97 jumper, the unimaginable rescue mission with San Antonio in 2003were responses to some of his lowest times on the court.

The earliest minutes after losing the championship to the Raptors would be no different. After months of urging the Warriors and their fans to treasure the magical five seasons before it was too late and only memories remained, Kerr gathered the assistant coaches and the video team in his office to practically insist they cherish a last moment together before scattering into the offseason and preparing for a 20192020 everyone knew would be different. Handing out his favorite beer, Modelo Especial, he went around the room and connected with our staff, talking about his appreciation for each of us, which hed never done like that before, Bruce Fraser, a close friend and assistant, noted. Not trying to make us feel better. Just letting us know he cared. Carrying the same message to players, Kerrs postgame address skipped somber and, as he later related, was ruled by appreciation. I cant tell you my gratitude in terms of just being put in this position to be with this group and to coach them and to help them, he said.

Kerr had always been genuine in valuing the positives, a trait established as early as his teen years. He was the first to say, accurately and not in false modesty, that he did not deserve the scholarship to the University of Arizona that fell from the sky, just as he had been realistic as the 1988 draft approached that he had little chance to last more than a season or two in the league. To then have a dream outcome in Tucson and spend fifteen seasons in the pros, with five titles and the chance to learn his future craft from greats Phil Jackson and Gregg Popovich, would not be taken for granted. Cracking open beers in his office with appreciation amid defeat was just Kerrs June 13, 2019, version of nearing the end of the Arizona years and deciding, Ive been one of the luckiest people in the world, because the 86 knee injury taught him perseverance and my fathers death has helped me put things in their true perspective.

The 20192020 that followed was even worse than expected. If it was, at the very least, a pause for the franchise that would regroup for 20202021, it was also the season that most mirrored Kerrs personal history as an unwanted college recruit who became a late draft pick and then spent several years as a replaceable journeyman making minimal contributions. He was practiced at being left behindand responding. The Warriors in last place may have felt strange, but finding himself on a steep climb was familiar. Kerr was in exactly the right place again.

They were sure they spotted two Japanese submarines in position to attack Southern California on December 7, 1941, or at least spy on the mainland, and four more hulking pieces of enemy machinery treading water in the Pacific Ocean the second day of self-appointed reconnaissance work. Seven-year-old Ann Zwicker and other neighborhood kids went to the bluffs of Palisades Park in Santa Monica to do their part in the infant war effort. In the Zwicker household, that would come to include her father standing watch as an air raid warden, his heavy woolen sweater, cap, whistle on a long chain, and armband laid out on a bedroom shelf between shifts for quick access if needed. Ann and a few friends likewise considered it their patriotic duty to trample the Japanese lilacs that grew wild on the bluffs and in some backyards.

Mostly, though, she grew up in a bubble. Santa Monica was a tranquil world of tree-lined streets, two doting parents in John and Susan Zwicker, Johns work for the same business firm for forty years, a warm relationship with her younger sister Jane, and nearby fields of undeveloped land for play. The days of potential submarine attacks were terrifying, but also entirely atypical. The girls world mostly consisted of neighborhood friends, and their wandering imaginations came from listening to Tom Mix and The Lone Ranger on the radio, and from the fright of tuning in to I Love a Mystery and This Is Your FBI. Even trips into Los Angeles, the burgeoning city fifteen miles east, were rare. And when the possibility of emotional crisis arose with the familys eviction in 1944, after the landlord raised the rent to what John and Susan considered an unacceptable amount, Ann would spin it into the idyllic memory of little more than the inconvenience of needing to relocate a few blocks. The retelling came complete with the serenity of the beautiful curtains and slipcovers her mother sewed for the new home, the red wallpaper her father hung in the girls shared room, and the long desk ordered for the two elementary school students.

Santa Monica High School was later so much fun that Ann practically hated to graduate in 1952. Choosing Occidental College, some twenty-five miles from home, all the way on the other side of Los Angeles, was adventurous by her standards. A conversation with a neighbor in Erdman Hall who had recently returned from a junior year in Greece with stories of living abroad, though, sparked a surge of wanderlust in Ann Zwicker as unexpected as it was life-changing. From then on, she worked toward a degree in Education and mentally scanned the globe for an opportunity.

India was the initial target, until her parents disapproved. Too adventurous. They steered intrepid Ann toward Europe, but that was not exotic enough for her in the search for someplace very different. When the minister at the familys church returned from the Middle East and raved about the beauty of the region and the high academic standards of a university on the coast of Lebanon, with the Mediterranean tides practically lapping at the campus grounds, it seemed the perfect compromise. The Presbyterian Church even had a program there, a junior year abroad at American University in Beirut.