Steve Kerr Ends NBA Career, Joins TNT

[mavsfanforever]

Steve Kerr Ends NBA Career, Joins TNT
LAST UPDATE: 8/7/2003 6:16:50 PM
Posted By: CyberBob

ATLANTA (AP) - Steve Kerr has decided to end his NBA playing career and join TNT as an analyst.

The cable network announced Thursday that Kerr will work on-site at one of TNT's two weekly Thursday night telecasts, along with All-Star weekend and the playoffs.

Kerr finished his 14-year career in June by winning a championship with the San Antonio Spurs - his fifth title. He was considering playing another season.

“It was tough to pass up the opportunity to play another year for the Spurs, but I'm so thrilled about the opportunity to work with TNT,” Kerr said. “It was the only way I'd pass up another year of playing in the NBA.”

Kerr was named to the NBA's All-Interview team twice during his career and has made numerous appearances on TNT's studio show.

“We were very impressed with Steve during his appearances in our studio and he'll be an outstanding addition to what we feel is the best collection of talent in sports television,” said David Levy, president of Turner Sports. “He brings us another personality, fresh from the game, with exceptional credibility along the lines of past and present TNT personalities like Doc Rivers, Danny Ainge, Jeff Van Gundy, Kenny Smith and Charles Barkley.”

Kerr retires as the league's leading career shooter from 3-point range (45.4 percent), as well as the single-season leader in three-point accuracy, hitting 89 of 170 attempts (52.4 percent) during the 1994-95 season.

Kerr won two championships with the Spurs (1999 and 2003) and three with the Chicago Bulls (1996, 1997 and 1998).

(Copyright 2003 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.)

[Drbio]

The guy was money from the three point line. The end of a nice run.

[OzMavs]

Truly great career in the NBA. Five titles.

After game six of the WCF, I am pretty sure he played one year too many.

[MavKikiNYC]

<Tip of the hat to Steve Kerr.>

When I think of a 3-pt shot I see his lightning-fast release.

His guest appearances in the TNT studio have shown enough potential to make me turn the volume back up on my television. Wish I could think this would mean less Charles Barkley, but that's probably too optimistic.

[superheadcat]

“It was tough to pass up the opportunity to play another year for the Spurs, but I'm so thrilled about the opportunity to work with TNT,” Kerr said. “It was the only way I'd pass up another year of playing in the NBA.”

huh?

[Dirk41= konsesjonen]

Good news for us!

[MFFL]

Thank God! He KILLED us in game 6.

[one long blue sock]

It was a pleasure watching him with the Bulls, thanks Steve.

[MavKikiNYC]

Came across this old article about Steve Kerr--some interesting things in here.

The notion of 'competitiveness' strikes a chord with me for some reason--about how Jordan was competitive to a fault, which helped make him a champion; about how Stockton was competetive to a fault and wasn't a champion; about how Kerr was competitive, though without the same killer instinct as Jordan or Stockton, and yet Kerr played on and contriubted to multiple champions.

I have begun to wonder about Nash and Dirk. It's not that they're not competitive and tought players, but they don't seem to have the killer instinct of a Jordan, or a Stockton even. But is it even necessary? Kerr seems to've done fine being competitive, but not necessarily a killer.

What it says to me is that the Mavs are missing a piece...a player who is not only competitive, but driven to dominate and control his opponents; who won't accept losing to the Hawks and the Grizzlies.

Not sure who that player is right now.

Straight Shooter

The two players have a lot in common, including the fact that their fathers were murdered, a subject they've never discussed with each other. The obvious trait they share is the seriousness with which they take their jobs. Kerr has been known to cry following an emotional playoff defeat and has trouble sleeping after a rough game. A big difference between the two is that Kerr is a master of self-deprecating humor, but according to teammates, Jordan can't laugh at himself.

If you beat Michael in a game of H-O-R-S-E, could you tease him about it? "No way," Kerr answers quickly. What if Kerr's four-year-old son, Nicholas, beat one of Jordan's kids in a game of one-on-one? Kerr shakes his head no.

"I know what this story is going to be about," Kerr's wife Margot says while sitting in a Chicago restaurant an hour after a late-season win over the Atlanta Hawks. "Father died; blew out his knee; so much to overcome." She moves her hands as if playing a violin. "Aren't people sick of it by now?"

Fred and Ethel Mertz had nothing on the Kerrs. Margot and Steve met on a blind date during their sophomore year at Arizona and married five years later. Full of spunk and sometimes serpent-tongued, Margot is fiercely supportive of her husband, unless he happens to be in the same room with her. In high school Steve was so shy around girls that his only dates came when he was asked out. That guy wouldn't have lasted five minutes with Margot.

Anyone familiar with Kerr's story knows what caused him, in his words, "to grow up in a hurry—pardon the cliche." Shortly before 3 a.m. on Jan. 18, 1984, during his freshman year at Arizona, Steve was awakened in his dorm room by a telephone call. Vake Simonian, a Presbyterian minister and a family friend, delivered the bad news: Steve's father, Dr. Malcolm Kerr, a noted Middle East scholar and the president of the American University in Beirut, Lebanon, had been assassinated. A group of unknown assailants gunned down Kerr, 52, as he stepped from a university elevator, in an apparent act of anti-American terrorism. "I was an 18-year-old kid who had just left home, and it scared the hell out of me," Kerr says. "It's a lot different reading in the newspaper about someone dying than actually having it happen to you. It's an instant dose of perspective. It makes every day more precious when you realize it could all be gone in an instant."

Nevertheless he scored 15 points in a game two nights later. The tragedy served to steel him for the challenges he was soon to face. During his sophomore and junior years Kerr developed into a solid starter. Then, as a member of the college all-star team representing the U.S. in the 1986 world championships in Madrid, he suffered torn anterior cruciate and medial collateral ligaments in his right knee, an injury that was initially diagnosed as career-ending. He sat out a year and returned in 1987-88, helping Arizona to the first Final Four appearance in school history. The Suns made him a second-round draft pick.

His father's death also made Kerr more introspective. For the past several years he has been keeping a journal, writing down anecdotes and his thoughts about life in the NBA. Once Margot found one of his notebooks and wrote a fictitious one-page entry detailing an affair she was supposedly having. When Steve found the passage a couple of weeks later while sitting in a hotel room, he cracked up.

Kerr didn't always take things in stride. Until he reached high school, he was one of the world's worst losers, the type of kid who'd go 3 for 3 in a Little League game, fly out to deep centerfield his fourth time at the plate and throw his bat and helmet against the backstop and pout in the dugout. At the Kerrs' home in the Chicago suburb of Lake Forest, it becomes quickly apparent that Steve has passed his considerable competitiveness on to Nick, who quickly falls behind in a floor-hockey game, tells his opponent to switch sides and then transposes the score.

Sports are a constant topic of conversation in the Kerr home, yet there is no sports section to be found in the house. "Steve doesn't want the paper here," Margot says, "because he's so sensitive to criticism." Can it be that Kerr, notorious for ribbing people who take themselves too seriously, is so serious about his own endeavors that he can't face the reproach of others?

This touchiness can be traced to a time when no one else believed in his potential to become a big-time college player, let alone an NBA star. A good player on a good high school team and a B student, Kerr was seriously recruited by just one college—Gonzaga, in Spokane—but when he went there for an official visit, he was embarrassed in a pickup game by a lightning-quick Gonzaga point guard named John Stockton. After the workout (which was a violation of NCAA regulations), a Gonzaga coach pulled Kerr aside and said, "I like you, but you're just not quick enough to play at this level."

Kerr applied to Colorado and planned to walk on there. But when he played well in a Los Angeles summer league, he drew the attention of Arizona and Cal State-Fullerton, two schools that each had a scholarship available. Fullerton offered him a full ride first, but Kerr was more intrigued by Arizona, where coach Lute Olson had been hired five months earlier to revitalize the program. It was mid-August and school was about to start, but for three days Kerr was unable to reach Olson to find out if a scholarship offer would be forthcoming. So Kerr verbally accepted the scholarship from Fullerton, but when he told his father, who was about to return to his job in Beirut, Malcolm hit the roof.

"He asked me where I really wanted to go to school," Steve recalls, "and I said Arizona. So my dad got on the phone and eventually tracked down Lute. Lute told him, 'It was a miscommunication. We had a scholarship open for him all along.' Yeah, right."

In late October, Malcolm flew back to the U.S. and spent several days with Steve in Tucson, bunking with him in his dorm room. "The last time I ever saw my father," he says.

Practice ends at the Berto Center, the Bulls' workout facility, and Kerr is the last one to leave the court, shooting his customary 100 free throws. Ninety-nine go in. Given Kerr's work ethic and heady play, many basketball people assume he is destined to coach. But everyone he knows in that profession has advised him against it. Kerr is setting his sights on a broadcasting job after he retires. (His contract with the Bulls expires at the end of the '97-98 season.)

Stashed somewhere in the Pacific Palisades, Calif., home where Ann Kerr still lives is a cassette tape that could ruin her son's broadcasting career before it gets started. It's a greatest-hits compilation of the on-air prank calls made by Steve and some friends when they were teenagers. On one call he engaged a radio psychologist for 45 minutes, posing as a kid who suspected he was adopted, before letting loose and mimicking the radio station's jingle.

If Steve ever had any doubts that Margot was the perfect woman for him, they were dispelled after her own radio call-in debut a few years ago. Kerr was playing for Cleveland at the time, and after Cavaliers coach Lenny Wilkens told the team that little-used reserve swingman Jimmy Oliver would start that night, Margot called a sports-talk station without revealing her identity and suggested it would be a good move if the Cavs started Oliver. "What a horrible idea!" the unsuspecting host bellowed. "We'll see," Margot replied.

Last year a Chicago sports-talk host, former Chicago Bears tackle Dan Jiggetts, was ripping Bulls center Luc Longley for being overweight. Margot called in from her car, this time identifying herself as Kerr's wife, and sprang to Longley's defense. She told Jiggetts, "From what I've seen, Dan, you're not so svelte yourself." Jiggetts cracked up, and a radio star was born. Now Margot is a frequent caller on Chicago talk shows.

It's mid-March, and the United Center is rocking for a rematch of last year's NBA Finals, pitting the Bulls against the Seattle SuperSonics. Jordan, Rodman and Scottie Pippen of the Bulls, and Gary Payton and Shawn Kemp of the Sonics have their moments, but the game doesn't pick up until the fourth quarter. With 9:57 to go, Kerr nails a three-pointer to tie the game at 62, then makes two steals (one of which leads to a hoop) in 33 seconds. The game goes into overtime, and the Sonics take an 80-78 lead. With 2:59 remaining, Longley delivers a bounce pass into the paint to Kerr, who fearlessly goes right to the basket. He gets nailed by 6'5" Nate McMillan, but the ball goes through the hoop. The free throw, of course, is good. His totals: 13 points on 5-of-6 shooting, with two assists and three steals. With three seconds to go, Jordan hits a pair of free throws, and the Bulls win 89-87. As the buzzer sounds, Kerr and Jordan, all smiles, slap hands and revel in the moment.

It's one of those images that proves that dreams really can come true. But Kerr is embarrassed by the corniness of his story. For him it's easier to file it away as a comedy than as a drama. "I don't think a day goes by when I don't think, How the hell did this ever happen?" he says. "It's like Walter Mitty, only it's the real thing. Or maybe Forrest Gump is more appropriate. He kept showing up in places out of nowhere, and it was like, How the hell did he get here?"