The Last Dance: What we learned from the final episodes

3. Poppa Kerr

Steve Kerr has never been one to hold his tongue when it comes to matters of social injustice. He holds one of the largest head coach platforms in recent sports memory, and yet that still doesn’t deter him from speaking his mind in hopes of keeping his overall public perception intact.

We saw this numerous times after instances of police brutality and gun violence that rocked the nation during his tenure with Golden State, where Kerr was one of the first to speak his mind on matters he felt needed immediate resolution.

And after watching the most recent episodes of The Last Dance, it’s not hard to see why.

A former professor of Middle East history and politics at UCLA, Steve’s father Malcolm Kerr was a highly distinguished scholar, and had a widely regarded positive reputation around the Southern California area. In fact, it was the Kerr father-son basketball expeditions at Pauley Pavilion during the late ’70s that sparked the latter’s interest in the game.

But Malcolm had visions of making an impact that stretched far beyond the Californian borders, and around the same time that Steve departed for college ball at the University of Arizona, his father ventured overseas to become the next president of the American University of Beirut.

His dream: foster and spur growth amongst young learners in the area that could make change not only locally, but serve as humanitarians for outreach into the rest of the world.

That dream would quickly turn to a nightmare.

After the International Peacekeeping Force removed themselves from the country, ghastly deathly violence ensued – and was especially directed towards people of American descent based on intense governmental disagreements within the nation.

The previous president had been kidnapped during what was tabbed the “summer of fighting” in Beirut, and Malcolm stepped into an already dangerous role to assume the vacant position. But he didn’t let that him from performing what he believed was his duty.

He made tremendous waves in his initial doings as president and became a campus staple among many of the Arab people that championed the school. His heritage was obvious though, and Kerr unfortunately became a martyr for his cause when he was gunned down by two gunmen posing as students on the campus just after exiting a meeting.

We all have different ways of reacting to loss, and for Steve, his grief and anguish was translated into a rigorous work ethic on the basketball court, and the young man began to develop a mentality that mirrored his father’s: that of pushing through even in the utmost adversity and facing uncertainty with confidence.

It was this ferociousness that saw him trading physical blows with Michael Jordan one practice.

But it was that exact mindset too, that allowed him to embrace some of his team’s biggest moments with a raw fearlessness, which is exactly what he employed when he sunk the game-winning jumper in Game 6 of the ’97 Finals to vault his team to a second consecutive title.

And we see this type of fervor put on full display by Kerr constantly today. Now, I’m sure he would’ve relished the opportunity to spend more time with his father, and hoped for much different circumstances, but one thing’s for certain: Malcolm’s impact on his son is incontestable.