Steve Kerr’s radical idea: Young ballers should play soccer first
A lot of impressionable boys and girls who worship at the altar of roundball are going to be gobsmacked when Warriors coach Steve Kerr is appointed Grand Potentate of basketball.
“If I was the czar of American basketball I would make every player coming through the youth basketball program play football,” Kerr said recently on the Men in Blazers soccer podcast.
“Football” meaning soccer for the uninitiated. Kerr had an international upbringing, so we’ll excuse his un-american vernacular.
Guaranteed that would cause widespread consternation on the part of up-and-coming practitioners of the between-thelegs dribble, the killer crossover, the jab step, the kick-out of the legs on every 3-point hoist. Because what is more basketball than those affectations?
Kerr’s case for soccer: “It translates directly (to hoops). The problem in basketball today,” he said to podcast host Roger Bennett, “the young players are coming up and they just try to beat everyone one-on-one with the dribble. They’re unbelievably gifted dribbling the ball but they don’t understand how to pass and to move. Which is what football would teach them.”
Kerr didn’t just pull this idea out his ear. He fell in love with soccer while his family was living in Egypt.
“I played football on the Condors,” he said. “I was 11 years old. The Mighty Condors. I was OK. I understood the game.
“When I was in Egypt, I played quite a bit because people would play all the time. I’d see the Egyptian kids on the street, two rocks (for a goal mouth) and a ball that was made out of string and cloth _ 3-on-3, 2-of-2, you’d see it everywhere. In fact I remember the
American students in my class challenged the Egyptian students. We got our ass kicked,” he laughed. “It was a horrible idea. We got crushed.
“I enjoyed it as I kid. What I really like about it now, it is so like basketball. Players who played soccer growing up, they’re better passers. Steve Nash. Unbelievable passer. Toni Kukoc was a beautiful passer. I would watch Toni coming to practice and he was kicking the ball around. He’d juggle the ball on his knees, rest the ball on the back of his neck. And he loved it. And there’s no question in my mind that he was influenced by football.
“(Kids) understand the concept of triangles. They understand the concept of passing the ball, and cutting behind the man defending. That’s what football is. Find the angles, creating opportunities, creating scoring chances.”
Just not on windmill slams.