Stephen Douglas Kerr (born September 27, 1965) is an American professional basketball coach and former player who is the head coach for the Golden State Warriors of the National Basketball Association (NBA). He is known as one of the most accurate three-point shooters of all time and one of the greatest coaches in NBA history. Kerr is a nine-time NBA champion, having won five titles as a player and four as head coach of the Warriors.
Kerr played college basketball for the Arizona Wildcats. He was a two-time first-team all-conference player in the Pac-10 (now known as the Pac-12) and earned All-American honors as a senior in 1988. In the 1987-88 season, Kerr set the NCAA single-season three-point field goal percentage record (57.3%). Selected by the Phoenix Suns in the second round of the 1988 NBA draft, Kerr played 15 seasons in the NBA. He won five NBA championships as a player--three with the Chicago Bulls and two with the San Antonio Spurs--and retired as the all-time NBA leader in single-season three-point shooting percentage and career three-point shooting percentage.
Following his retirement as a player, Kerr became a minority owner of the Phoenix Suns as part of a group led by Robert Sarver that purchased the team in 2004. In June 2007, Phoenix named Kerr the team's president of basketball operations and general manager. Kerr announced he was leaving the position in June 2010. After stepping down from his post with the Suns, Kerr worked as a color commentator for NBA on TNT until 2014.
In May 2014, Kerr was named head coach of the Golden State Warriors. Under his leadership, the franchise entered the most successful period in its history, reaching the NBA Finals six times and winning four championships (in 2015, 2017, 2018, and 2022). The 2015–16 Warriors won an unprecedented 73 games, breaking the record for the most wins in an NBA season.
Early life and international play
Kerr was born in Beirut, Lebanon, to Malcolm H. Kerr, a Lebanese-born American academic who specialized in the Middle East, and his wife, Ann (Zwicker). He has three siblings. His grandfather, Stanley Kerr, volunteered with the Near East Relief after the Armenian genocide and rescued women and orphans in Aleppo and Marash before eventually settling in Beirut. Kerr spent much of his childhood in Lebanon and other Middle Eastern countries. While in Beirut in the summer of 1983, he met a number of US Marines who were later killed in the Beirut barracks bombings. Kerr attended Cairo American College in Egypt, the American Community School in Beirut, Lebanon, and Palisades High School (now Palisades Charter High School) in Los Angeles, graduating in 1983.
Malcolm Kerr was killed by members of the Islamic Jihad on January 18, 1984 at the age of 52 while he was serving as president of the American University of Beirut. Malcolm Kerr was shot twice in the back of his head by gunmen using suppressed handguns in the hallway outside his office. Steve was only 18 years old at the time, and a college freshman; regarding his father's death, Kerr has said: "Before my father was killed, my life was impenetrable. Bad things happened to other people."
In the summer of 1986, Kerr was named to the U.S. national team that competed in the FIBA World Championship in Spain. The team was the last American men's senior squad composed strictly of amateur players to capture a gold medal. Kerr suffered a knee injury during the tournament.
College career
Minimally recruited out of high school, Kerr played basketball at the University of Arizona from 1983 to 1988. Kerr injured his knee playing in the 1986 FIBA World Championship, forcing him to miss the Wildcats' entire 1986–87 season.