Olson provided Kerr a light in darkness
Steve Kerr was more than 7,000 miles away from his family, in a freshman dorm at the University of Arizona, when he learned the news: Two assassins had shot and killed Kerr’s father, Malcolm, outside of his office in Lebanon.
At the urging of his coach, Lute Olson, and Olson’s wife, Bobbi, Kerr spent the next two nights at the Olsons’ home. They fed Kerr and helped him get in touch with his mother. After giving Kerr some time to process his dad’s sudden death, Olson told Kerr about how his own dad had died from a stroke when Olson was 5.
“He and Bobbi took care of me,” Kerr told The Chronicle on Friday. “My family was half a world away, so they sort of became a surrogate family.”
Olson, who built Arizona into a national powerhouse and led the Wildcats to the school’s only national championship, died Thursday, 18 months after suffering a stroke. He was 85. Some measure Olson’s legacy by his 776 career wins, four Final Four appearances, 23 consecutive NCAA tournaments and 11 Pac10 titles, but Kerr is more focused on his former mentor’s ability to make a team feel like family.
Since becoming the Warriors’ head coach in 2014, Kerr has tried to foster the same brotherhood in the Bay Area that Olson once made a staple of his Arizona locker rooms. More than three decades removed from his final college game, Kerr, 54, counts his old Wildcats teammates among his closest friends.
Nothing Kerr has experi
enced in the NBA, including eight titles (five as a player, three as a coach), topped the joy of Arizona’s run to the 1988 Final Four, which was largely a testament to Olson’s resourcefulness. Just five years earlier, before convincing Olson to leave a strong Iowa program for Tucson, the Wildcats were a national punchline at 424.
When Olson took the Arizona job in spring 1983, he had to fill five open scholarships — a tall task given that the recruiting cycle was over. His search for overlooked talent took him to a Long Beach showcase where an undersized guard with floppy blonde hair was draining 3pointers.
After he watched Kerr do the same at a pickup game two days later, Olson gave Kerr just his second Division I scholarship offer (Cal State Fullerton was the other). Even Bobbi, who accompanied her husband to the pickup game, was surprised Olson wanted to gamble on the 6foot2, 160pound sharpshooter.
“Apparently, at the end of the game, he asked Bobbi what she thought, and she goes, ‘Are you kidding?’ ” Kerr said with a chuckle. “Lute loved telling that story for years.”
During his first few months in Tucson, Kerr wasn’t quite sure what to make of Olson. His practices were long and intense. Though Olson never cursed, he was quick to bark at Kerr for a missed screen or illadvised shot.
After his dad’s assassination, Kerr began to see another side of Olson. There was a sincerity in Olson’s voice whenever he told Kerr to call him if he needed anything. Kerr made a habit of stopping by Olson’s office to chat between classes, often napping on Olson’s couch for an hour or two.
“He just kept everything as normal as possible and allowed me to play, practice and move on with my routine, which was important,” Kerr said. “You have to sort of fall into a routine when you suffer a loss like that. You’ve got to find a way to just get through the day, and that’s what helped me just get through.”
A day after the Wildcats fell to Oklahoma in the Final Four his senior year, Kerr was honored as the NCAA’s “Most Courageous” player. As he stood behind the microphone at a downtown Kansas City, Mo., hotel, Kerr fought back tears, saying, “I’ve enjoyed every moment of my career at Arizona. I’ll remember it forever.”
Five years later, after free agency came and went without an NBA team offering him a contract, Kerr called Olson to see if he had any room on his staff. It’s possible that Kerr would have gotten his start in coaching then had the Bulls not decided to sign him to a minimum deal.
As Kerr became a role player on championship teams with Chicago and San Antonio, Olson tracked his former pupil’s career closely. Dinner plans were arranged whenever their schedules landed them in the same city. After Olson retired from coaching in 2008, he often flew to Oakland for Kerr’s Warriors games.
“When he’d come in, it was like an instant connection with everybody,” Kerr said. “I was always very proud that he was my coach.”
To this day, Kerr feels a special connection with many of Olson’s former players — even if they played for Arizona long after he did. In 1997, before the Wildcats won their lone national title, Kerr and former teammate Sean Elliott boarded the team bus and encouraged them to get the job done. According to the New York Times, the speech left Olson in tears.
When Kerr took over the Warriors, he built a rapport with Andre Iguodala over shared Olson anecdotes. This, Kerr believes, helped
Golden State convince Iguodala to move from the starting lineup to a bench role.
It’s fitting, then, that Kerr was having dinner Thursday in San Diego with his former Arizona teammate, Jud Buechler, when he received a call from Olson’s wife, Kelly. The news came as no big surprise. Olson, whose health never recovered after his stroke, had recently moved into hospice care.
Kerr and Buechler toasted to their late coach, shared old stories and laughed. The next morning, Kerr became emotional as he thumbed through text chains with other former Arizona players.
“One of the most important things that I learned right away playing for him was the importance of the team really feeling like a family,” said Kerr, who often runs a 3on2 drill at Warriors practices that he learned at Arizona and named after Olson. “It’s about that connection to people, and the importance of those relationships that exist beyond basketball.
“We’re all really feeling that now, with our relationship to Coach and how it’s really connected each other. Even those of us who didn’t play together, we feel a connection.”