As the United States marks 25 years since the September 11 terrorist attacks, Golden State Warriors head coach Steve Kerr is reflecting on the moment that redefined an entire generation. He recently sat down with Tom Tolbert on his show to talk about the morning the towers fell. For Kerr, the national tragedy carries a deeply personal weight: his own father, Malcolm Kerr, then-president of the American University of Beirut, was assassinated by gunmen in Lebanon in 1984. While he’s often spoken about how losing his father changed the trajectory of his life, this time he revealed the larger impact 9/11 had on him.
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Recalling the morning of September 11, 2001, Kerr revisited the lingering shock of processing the news alongside his wife, Margot, and how they immediately sought out their youngest son.
“Of course. Forever I’ll remember it,” Kerr said when asked if he recalled where he was. “I was driving my daughter to school with her friends in the carpool, dropped her off, heard on the radio coming back home that something had happened. But it was very unclear. Got home and just turned the TV on and then Margot and I just sat there and watched it all happen the next couple of hours.”
The realization of the scale of the attacks prompted the couple to check on their family.
“We decided to just drive to Nick’s school because Nick was, he was like eight I think. He was the only one really old enough to really, you know, be hit by it,” Kerr explained. “And you know, so we just drove to school to have lunch with Nick and there were a bunch of other parents there and everybody was walking around in a daze, in shock.”
Drawing a historical parallel, Kerr highlighted how 9/11 became the defining moment of collective trauma for modern Americans.
“I think for our generation, it’s—you know, everybody in the previous generation knew exactly where they were when John Kennedy was assassinated,” Kerr said, with Tolbert noting the generation before pointed to Pearl Harbor.
“Yeah, for us, it’s 9/11,” Kerr agreed. “And I’m with you, I think about all those first responders and all the victims and families and yeah, so here’s to all of you out there.”
This isn’t the first time Kerr, who is about to embark on his 13th season as the Warriors coach with Stephen Curry and Draymond Green, has gotten deeply reflective about the 25-year-old tragedy. Some years ago, he opened up about how his generation relied on NBA and sports to overcome that trauma.
Steve Kerr advocated sports as a source of healing
In the wake of the 2001 tragedy, American sports quickly morphed into a vital sanctuary for public grieving and national unity. Ballparks and arenas across the country transformed into sea-of-red-white-and-blue gatherings, permanently reshaping pregame ceremonies with heightened military honors, flyovers, and routine renditions of “God Bless America,” to honor the brave first responders in the 9/11 rescue.
Witnessing the strong display in the Bay Area in 2018, Kerr shared how sports and patriotism intertwined over the subsequent decades. Speaking in an interview with NBC Sports Bay Area, Kerr noted that the tragedy “spurred a strong military dynamic” that permanently embedded itself into the fabric of American sporting events.
“Sports are a form of entertainment. I talk to Peter Guber [Co-owner and Co-Executive Chairman of the Golden State Warriors] about this all the time. We’re putting on a display, and we want to draw the audience in. We want the audience to really feel emotionally connected to us. Well, what better way to feel connected than to feel patriotic and to see the flag and to see members of our military who have fought for our country standing before us before we’re playing a game?”
He went on to say, “Sometimes, it’s really inspiring. You see a mother and daughter or a father and son reconnected after a tour of duty, and everybody gets emotional. And sometimes it feels like we’re being patronized. Like this is being used. We’re just playing a sport here, and it feels sort of nationalistic, if that makes sense. So we are kind of wandering down a dicey path on this front.”
As the country honors a quarter-century of remembrance, Kerr’s reflections bridge the gap between individual grief and the broader cultural shifts that continue to frame American life and sports today.