Golden State Warriors and Team USA head coach Steve Kerr is very familiar with Chicago’s United Center, but he’ll take center stage in a different way at the DNC’s opening night.
Kerr, who won three consecutive championships with the Chicago Bulls between 1996 and 1998 and hit the game-winning shot in Game 6 of the 1997 NBA Finals, will address convention delegates in Chicago on Monday.
In all, Kerr won five championships as a player and has won four more as a coach with the Warriors, posting a record of 519-274 in 10 seasons at the helm.
Kerr also helped Team USA capture the gold medal in men’s basketball at the recent Paris Olympics, though he isn’t “expected to continue” in that role moving forward, according to NBA Insider Marc Stein.
The coach likely won’t be talking too much about basketball during his remarks. As a fierce critic of former President Donald Trump, Kerr will likely praise the administration of President Joe Biden and the candidacy of Vice President Kamala Harris, having offered his endorsement of their ticket during the 2020 election cycle.
Kerr has been an active proponent of gun control legislation, spurred on by the shooting death of his father Malcolm Kerr in 1984 by Islamic Jihad terrorists in Beirut.
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Kerr also has praised the efforts of the Black Lives Matter movement, and has been a target of Trump’s ire as well, including in the aftermath of executive Daryl Morey’s praise of anti-government protests in Hong Kong in 2019.
Trump called Kerr a “scared little boy” in the aftermath of those comments, which Kerr didn’t immediately respond to.
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“This was my experience with, wow, has the office sunken low. My hope is that we can find a mature unifier from either party to sit in that chair and try to restore some dignity to the Oval Office again, and I think it will happen,” he said of the comments made by the former president.
