LOS ANGELES — Steve Kerr knows about terrorist attacks.
He lost his father 38 years ago in a terrorist attack.
Steve Kerr knows that what happened in Uvalde, Texas, on Tuesday afternoon was another terrorist attack.
Except that this time, the terrorists are us, and there’s seemingly nothing we will do to stop them.
“I’m not going to talk about basketball … any basketball questions don’t matter,” the Golden State Warriors coach said to begin his news conference Tuesday night before Game 4 of the Western Conference finals in Dallas against the Mavericks. “Since we left shootaround, 14 children were killed, 400 miles from here. And a teacher. And in the last 10 days we’ve had elderly Black people killed in a supermarket in Buffalo, we’ve had Asian churchgoers killed in Southern California and now we have children murdered at school.”
His eyes watered. His voice thickened. He pounded his palm on a table three times. His words became a scream.
“When are we going to do something?”
It was the stunning opening to a riveting three-minute rant about another senseless shooting, another avoidable tragedy, another collection of tiny innocents turned into corpses because our leaders don’t have the guts to pass the laws that could help protect them.
Stick to sports? You can stick that “Stick to sports.”
Shut up and dribble? How about you shut up and listen?
In the wake of the mass shooting at Robb Elementary, which claimed the lives of at least 19 children and two adults as well as the life of the 18-year-old gunman, Kerr spoke for much of America in his greatest pregame speech ever.
Sports may be trivial, but people pay attention to those who play and coach sports.
Sports might be silly games, but people notice when suddenly the leader of the most popular team in one of this country’s most popular leagues refuses to talk about those games. So I ask you Mitch McConnell, I ask all of you senators who refuse to do anything about the violence and school shootings and supermarket shootings. Are you going to put your own desire for power ahead of the lives of our children and our elderly and our churchgoers? Because that’s what it looks likeCoach steve kerr,
What Steve Kerr did Tuesday night mattered because one could hear heart, feel his emotion and share his pain.
