A Season Inside (15 page)

Malcolm Kerr was on the UCLA faculty for twenty years, even when teaching abroad. For a couple of years, Steve Kerr was a UCLA ballboy. His first close-up heroes were college basketball players. He played all sports when he was young, although his quick temper as a baseball pitcher unnerved his parents.

“He just didn’t handle losing very well at all,” Ann Kerr said. “It was especially bad when he was pitching. Malcolm and I were actually sort of relieved when he started playing basketball all the time. You can’t afford to lose your temper every time something goes wrong in that sport. We were much more comfortable with that.”

By ninth grade, basketball was Kerr’s sport. The family was living in Cairo and Kerr played for the American school team. They mostly played adult club teams, often on outdoor courts that had rocks in them. The games were rather crude, but Kerr was happy.

“People don’t understand what Cairo is really like,” he said. “They think of Egypt and they think of pyramids and camels. Actually, for an American teenager, Cairo is a great place. There are Americans all over and there aren’t very many rules you have to follow. I had a great time over there.”

He returned to Los Angeles for his sophomore year at Pacific Palisades High School, largely to play on a more competitive level. By his junior season, his parents had come back to the U.S. and Kerr was starting to attract notice from college scouts because of his range as a shooter.

With Malcolm Kerr back in the Middle East, Ann Kerr stayed behind in Los Angeles during Steve’s senior season to help him deal with the recruiting process. There wasn’t very much to deal with. The scouting services had labeled him too slow. No one called. Finally, Gonzaga asked him to fly up for a visit.

“I flew up there and what they did was try me out,” Kerr remembered. “I had to play against John Stockton [now a star with the Utah Jazz] for two hours. I didn’t do very well. When it was over, the coach, Jay Hillock, said to me, ‘It wouldn’t be a problem if you were a step slow, but you’re two steps slow.’ ”

Kerr was crushed. When he graduated from high school that spring he still had no idea where he would be going to college.

In the meantime, Malcolm Kerr’s lifelong dream had come true: He had been offered the job as president of the American University in Beirut. Being an expert on the Middle East, this was what he had always wanted. But he also knew there was danger associated with the job. Beirut was very different from what it had been in the 1950s, when it was known as “The Paris of the Middle East.”

Now it was caught in the middle of an ugly war. The man Malcolm Kerr would succeed, David Dodge, had been kidnapped in 1982 and held hostage for a year. Malcolm Kerr called a family meeting to talk about the job.

“We all knew the risks involved,” Ann Kerr said. “But this was the job Malcolm had always dreamed about. There was never really any doubt about going.”

Steve was seventeen at the time. He remembers that family meeting. “I didn’t say much,” he said. “I never really considered what was happening. Obviously, I was kind of naïve but it’s the kind of thing where you think, ‘This can’t happen to me.’ This was just my dad’s job. I never thought about it any differently.”

His older brother John did think about it differently. Hauntingly, Steve can still remember John saying to his father, “I just don’t want Mom to end up a widow.”

Steve looks back now and knows that hindsight is useless. “When I think about it,” he said softly, “I don’t feel any bitterness. Just sadness. My dad is the reason I’m at Arizona, he’s the reason I’m the basketball player that I am. Sometimes, when I think of the success I’ve had I think about how much he would have enjoyed it all. I just wish he was here for all of this.”

It was Malcolm Kerr who brought Arizona and Steve Kerr together. During the summer of 1983, after graduating from high school, Steve played summer league basketball in Los Angeles. His father was home for the summer and they spent a good deal of time together. Often, when Steve played, Malcolm watched. Malcolm Kerr once said that his greatest joy, next to being president of AU-Beirut, was watching Steve play basketball.

Kerr’s play in the summer league attracted attention. Colorado was interested but didn’t have a scholarship to offer. Kerr was welcome to come there and walk on if he liked. Cal State Fullerton was not only
interested but was willing to offer Kerr a scholarship. A first. And then there was Arizona.

Lute Olson had taken the Arizona job that spring, knowing he had a major rebuilding job ahead of him. He was scouring the California summer leagues in search of underclassmen with potential when he spotted Kerr. He was surprised—and intrigued—when he learned that Kerr was a high school graduate without a college.

“We had a scholarship left, we weren’t very good to say the least, and this kid could shoot,” Olson remembered. “I thought he was worth looking at again.”

Olson sent Assistant Coach Kenny Burmeister to look at Kerr. Burmeister wasn’t sold. Olson went back again, this time taking his wife Bobbi with him. Bobbi Olson had seen a lot of basketball. When she saw Kerr she turned to her husband and said, “Lute, are you kidding?”

Olson was hesitant. In the meantime, Fullerton was pressing Kerr for a decision. He wanted to go to Arizona—sight unseen—but suspected Olson was delaying in the hope that someone better might come along.

“I spent three days trying to get the Arizona coaches on the phone to find out whether they wanted me or not,” Kerr said. “They were all out on the road. Finally, I just gave up, figured they were ducking me and called Fullerton and told them I would come. They were really nice and back then they had a better team than Arizona did. But to tell you the truth I wasn’t that thrilled about going to college just off the freeway next to Disneyland.”

Two days after Kerr had committed to Fullerton, Olson finally called back. Kerr told him he was going to Fullerton. Olson wished him luck and said he was sorry Arizona had lost him. Kerr was baffled. Arizona had never offered him a scholarship.

“Somewhere, our communication broke down,” Olson said. “I had the impression we had simply lost Steve to Fullerton. I didn’t realize he wanted to play for us.”

Malcolm Kerr did. He noticed his son moping around the house, clearly unhappy about the way things had turned out. So, he sat him down and said, “Where do you want to go to college?”

“Arizona.”

“Fine, then. Let’s call Coach Olson and tell him that.”

Olson remembers the phone call vividly. “Malcolm asked me if we
wanted Steve at Arizona. I told him we did. Then he said to me, ‘This is a very important question. Steve is torn up about having made a commitment to Fullerton. He doesn’t want to renege. But he really wants to go to Arizona.’

“I told Malcolm that it might sound self-serving but if a kid wanted to go to another school after committing to mine, I wouldn’t want him to come because no one wants someone in their program who is going to be unhappy.”

Malcolm Kerr talked with his son again. He pointed out that nothing had been signed and that four years was a long time. The decision was made. Steve would enroll at Arizona.

That done, he went off on vacation with his family to Beirut. Malcolm Kerr was taking up residence there as the president of AU-Beirut. On the day Steve was supposed to leave Beirut to fly home and start school, his mother took him to the airport.

“While we were in the terminal, they started shelling the airport,” Steve said. “They were trying to get planes as they sat on the runway. The driver who had taken us to the airport told us to get away from all the windows. Then, he decided to get us out of there and back to the embassy.”

Two days later the same driver took Kerr on a terrifying ride through Syria to Amman, Jordan. They were stopped a number of times but the driver, who knew the route and the games, talked them through. Kerr flew home from there. Several months later he learned that his driver had been killed by a sniper shortly after that ride.

Kerr fit in quickly at school and with the basketball team. He was the third guard, the shooting specialist off the bench on a lousy team. But he was happy.

Then, on January 18, 1984, Kerr was awakened shortly after midnight by a telephone call in his dorm room. His brother’s nightmare had become reality: Malcolm Kerr had been shot and killed by two assassins outside his office in Beirut.

The first member of the Arizona coaching staff to hear the news was Assistant Coach Scott Thompson. He raced over to Kerr’s dorm and found Kerr sitting motionless on his bed, paralyzed by what he had been told. When Thompson sat down, the first thing Kerr said to him was, “I’ve got to talk to my mother.”

It took several hours, but Kerr finally got his mother on the phone. She and his brother Andrew were both okay. The next two days are a blur in Kerr’s memory. What he does remember is that the only escape from his grief came when he was on the basketball court. Arizona State was coming to Tucson to play two days after the murder. Olson asked Kerr if he wanted to play. Kerr said absolutely.

“It was the only thing to do,” he said. “My dad would have been very disappointed in me if I hadn’t played. What’s more, there was nothing I could do at that point. I knew my family was safe. I was going to the memorial service the next day. It just wouldn’t have made sense not to play.”

A moment of silence for Malcolm Kerr was planned before the tip-off. Initially, Olson intended to keep the team off the floor until it was over. But Kerr came to him and said he felt he needed to be there. Olson then decided the whole team should be there with him.

It is difficult to imagine the emotion of that evening. Even with Arizona’s arch-rival in the building, few people in the McKale Center that night were really focused on basketball. The violence of the shooting that had taken place thousands of miles away was tangible as everyone stood in silence. Kerr broke down. So did many in the crowd.

Eight minutes into the game, Olson sent Kerr in as part of his normal rotation. The first time he touched the ball—eighteen seconds after coming in—Kerr was open. Instinct took over. He shot from twenty feet. Swish. It is unlikely that a shot to win a national championship was as electrifying as that one.

“I’m not sure I can describe the feeling in the building that night,” Olson said. “All I know is, I cried and I certainly wasn’t alone.”

The legend of Steve Kerr was born that night. He scored 12 points—shooting five-of-seven from the field—and the inspired Wildcats destroyed a superior Arizona State team 71–49 for their first Pacific 10 victory under Olson. From that night forward, Kerr became Tucson’s adopted son. Whenever he scored a field goal and the PA announcer screeched, “Steeeeeve Kerrrrrrrrr!” Thirteen thousand people screeched it right back. Everyone in town wanted to invite Kerr to dinner. Every school wanted him to speak to its students.

Almost always, Kerr accepted. At times, being such a hero was embarrassing to him. He had never thought of himself as special, and
that attitude is exactly what made him special. Also, he kept his self-deprecating sense of humor even amid the constant adulation.

He became a starter as a sophomore, then, as a junior moved to point guard. There he became a star, the leader of a very young team, picked in preseason to finish eighth, that shocked people by winning the Pac-10 title. When people asked Kerr about his emergence as the team’s leader, he laughed.

“You want to know why I’m the leader,” he said. “It’s simple. Last summer we went to France. I speak French. The other guys don’t. Every time they wanted to hit on a girl, they needed me to interpret. That’s when I became the leader.”

Olson, who was continually amazed by Kerr’s improvement as a player, didn’t buy that line. “He’s the best leader I’ve ever seen,” he said. “If he told this team that green was orange, they would all believe him.”

During the summer after Kerr’s junior year, Olson coached the U.S. team in the World Championships in Spain. Kerr made the team and was a key player. Then, during the semifinal game against Brazil, he drove the lane looking to create a play against Oscar, the Brazilian shooting specialist who would torture the U.S. a year later in the Pan American Games final.

“I remember going by Oscar easily because he couldn’t guard anyone,” Kerr said. “I saw Charles Smith open and I jumped in the air to pass him the ball. But someone stepped in front of him so I sort of twisted in the air to get a shot off. When I came down my whole body was off-balance. I felt my knee just blow out when I landed. The pain was unbelievable.”

David Robinson, the center on that team, was sitting on the bench when Kerr fell. He can still see the play in his mind’s eye: “When Steve came down it was one of the most horrifying sounds I’ve ever heard. You knew it was bad right away.”

It was torn ligaments, bad enough that team doctor Tim Taft felt he should immediately tell Kerr that this was often a career-ending injury. When that diagnosis reached Tucson, hysteria broke out. The word was that Kerr was through as a player. Kerr never believed that for a minute, although when someone asked him what he would do if he couldn’t play again he grinned and said, “I’ll just have them fire Coach Olson and take his job.”

There was no need. Kerr went through reconstructive surgery,
worked all through the ’87 season on rehabilitation, and began playing again in the spring. Slowly, his confidence was coming back. But as the Wildcats flew into Anchorage the day before Thanksgiving, Kerr had misgivings. In the cold weather, the knee felt stiff. He wondered if he could compete with Grant and Douglas.

The answer to that question was an emphatic yes. In the semifinals, he completely outplayed Grant. Kerr was so excited that when Grant started talking to him during the game, he talked back to him. And when he buried a key three-pointer late in the game, Kerr pointed right at Grant as if to say, “Take that.”

Two days later, after enduring an earthquake in the morning—“A nice way to start the day,” Kerr said—the Wildcats upset Syracuse. Suddenly, people were taking notice of them. Dick Vitale was screaming on ESPN that Sean Elliott was an All-America. Kerr, people noticed, wasn’t just a good story, he was a good player.