By Brad Hubbard | 6/22/2024
For the record, I’m a big fan of Steve Kerr and am of the belief that he would be leading the State Department right now if he had not had such a passion for basketball. ‘Steve Kerr: A Life’ by Scott Howard-Cooper is a great book to read if you know little or nothing about Steve Kerr. It doesn’t appear that Howard-Cooper ever sat down for long interviews with Kerr but has some great background and tells a good story nonetheless. It’s an easy read and one you can add to your list for a long weekend.
Steve Kerr is not your typical NBA player or coach. He lucked out as a player being able to play for the late Lute Olsen at Arizona, Phil Jackson while in Chicago and Gregg Popovich while in San Antonio. He’s been a GM and now a head coach with Golden State and has won 9 NBA Finals (5 as a player and 4 as a coach). Not bad for a kid born in Beirut and essentially a last minute scholarship afterthought at Arizona.
His youth is what is interesting to me. He was that dual-sport star in high school and while to get back to finish his last year in high school, he had to get back from Beirut to SoCal. This ended up being a ride to Damascus and then south to Amman where he could then get on a flight back to America. All because they had ‘Shelly Weather’ at the Beirut airport. AKA, there were bombs coming in and the airport got closed. I mean that’s one story for you when asked, ‘how was your vacation?’
Despite not doing the multiple sit down interviews with the subject to write the quintessential biography, Howard-Cooper does a great job in diving into the archives and putting together a solid linear story about one of the more impressive people in the NBA today. He’s played with greats (Jordan, Pippen, Robinson, Duncan) and now gets to coach some greats (Curry, Durant, Thompson). So to see how being coached by greats translates into how he coaches is pretty fascinating to see. I’d recommend this book for any NBA fan and anyone who is interested in Kerr.
Brad Hubbard.com 