Golden State Warriors head coach Steve Kerr, who also coaches Team USA at the 2024 Paris Olympics, recently attempted to encapsulate his team’s emotions following an assassination attempt on former President Donald Trump.
Kerr described the incident as “terrible” and a “demoralizing day for our country.”
“This is a time when we feel very proud to represent our country, wearing the USA on our chest and competing in the Olympics,” Kerr told ESPN’s Brian Windhorst. “We’ve talked to the players about how vital it is to exhibit the best version of ourselves as humans in order to represent our country in a courteous, dignified manner. It makes you want to do it even more because it is just humiliating for us to sit here and reflect on what has occurred and what is going on in our country.”
Kerr has a lengthy record of condemning gun violence. His father, Malcolm Kerr, was slain in Beirut, Lebanon in 1984. The militant group Islamic Jihad targeted Malcolm because he was president of the American University of Beirut.
“It’s such a demoralizing day for our country,” Mr. Kerr added. “It’s another evidence of both our political and gun cultural divisions. A 20-year-old armed with an AR-15 attempted to shoot the former president. It’s difficult to digest everything, and it’s worrisome to think about where this will lead given the country’s current problems. So it is an awful day.”
The incident occurred during a rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, on Saturday night. Trump claimed he was “shot with a bullet that pierced the upper part of my right ear.” Trump was swiftly whisked off stage by Secret Service officials, his ear drenched in blood. The suspected gunman, Thomas Matthew Crooks, 20, was identified by the FBI early Sunday morning.
Warriors’ Steve Kerr and Team USA players react to Donald Trump’s shot.
“It’s obviously a very sad time in general,” Warriors point guard Stephen Curry explained. “All the discussions about the election and the situation of politics in our country. Then you have a circumstance like this, which just [elicits] a lot of feelings about things that we need to fix as a society.”
Martina Strong, the US Ambassador to the UAE, addressed the squad on Sunday. Team USA will remain in the Middle East this week before playing a few warm-up games ahead of the Paris Olympics. They’ll play Australia on Monday and Serbia on Wednesday.
“Obviously what we’re doing is very trivial, just playing basketball,” Kerr told reporters. “But we want to put our best selves out there to give folks a sense of what our country can be like. And then you hear something like this, which is extremely disheartening and obviously sad.”
“Thank God Trump wasn’t hit,” she said, “but it’s just so demoralizing in every which way.”
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