Warriors coach Steve Kerr receives advise from his son, Nicholas.
Nicholas, 31, is in his first year as head coach of the Warriors’ G League squad in Santa Cruz.
SANTA CRUZ— Nicholas Kerr was on the phone with his mother, Margot, and happened to be watching the Warriors.
It was the December game against the Clippers, when a Paul George 3-pointer in the waning seconds sunk the Warriors. Kerr noticed his father, long-time Warriors coach Steve Kerr, lose his fury on the bench.
“Dad has to watch his body language,” he told his mother over the phone.
The next day, his father called.
“Mom said you were mad at my body language,” Steve remarked. “You’re right.”
A few days later, when the Warriors came home to face the Portland Trail Blazers, Steve coached with his son’s message in mind.
“I made a really conscious effort to stay off the officials and generally have a better air about me because of what he said,” Steve was quoted as saying. “I listen to his advice just like he listens to mine.”
Steve, 58, and Nicholas, 31, have been with the same organization since 2018. Nicholas is in his debut season as head coach of the G League Santa Cruz Warriors, Golden State’s minor league affiliate located 70 miles south.
Steve has carefully negotiated their new relationship. He avoids criticizing his son’s coaching and prefers to listen rather than speak.
When asked how frequently Steve gives him advise, Nicholas responded, “Never, actually.”
In a recent interview, Steve stated, “The most important thing is that I am a father.”
The truth is, basketball brought them together a long time ago.
“From the moment I could walk,” Nicholas added.
In the 1990s, when his father was one of the NBA’s most efficient 3-point shooters and a five-time champion with the Chicago Bulls and San Antonio Spurs, Nicholas would watch every game he could. As long as he could see his father on the screen, it felt like they were in the same room.
“That probably helped fill the void,” Nicholas explained. “It still does.”
Back then, Nicholas was certain he’d one day have the same job as his father: NBA player.
Things changed when Steve retired after the 2003 season and the family relocated to San Diego. Steve promptly obtained a new job; he began coaching his son’s team.
“That was his first coaching job,” Nicholas explained. “No one talks about that one. The sixth-grade San Diego Wildcats. “We only had six or seven players.”
What was Steve Kerr’s experience as a middle school coach?
“The same as he is now,” Nicholas replied. “Patient. Nevertheless, he broke a clipboard. He’d be unhappy if the effort was low. “That’s the only time I remember him snapping.”
When Nicholas entered high school, he requested his father to stop coaching him. Looking back, he isn’t sure why. However, his decision came at the same time that he recognized he would never be able to follow in his father’s footsteps as a professional basketball player.
Perhaps he wanted to create his own persona, aside from being Steve Kerr’s kid.
“I’m sure that was part of it,” he remarked.
After high school, Nicholas played sporadically at the University of San Diego for parts of three seasons before finishing his collegiate career with seven games in one season at California.
After abandoning his dream of playing professionally, he followed in his father’s footsteps and became a graduate assistant at Cal. He quickly landed his first NBA position as a quality assurance coach with the Spurs, working under Gregg Popovich, who had previously coached Steve nearly 20 years before.
Nicholas joined the Warriors’ player development team in 2018. Now the head coach at Santa Cruz, he frequently coaches the same players his father did the night before.
“I think both of them are the same, really calm, but when they need to be explosive, they are,” said Gui Santos, a 21-year-old up-and-coming player who has played for both Kerr coaches while bouncing between Warriors’ squads this season.
In November, the G League Warriors were on fire. Nicholas won his first five games as head coach, and Santa Cruz jumped out to an 11-4 record, but their title dreams were dashed in the Showcase Cup Tournament quarterfinals on December 21. As of Friday afternoon, they had a 9-7 record to begin the regular season.
Nicholas runs many of the same plays as his father, primarily to make things easier for the players who switch back and forth.
“We’re definitely similar,” Nicholas explained. “He’s maturer than me. “I’m still going from possession to possession.”
Nicholas attempts to watch as many Warriors games as possible. Before Draymond Green’s suspension in December, Nicholas believed his father’s squad was “about to turn a corner.” Green returned in January, and the Warriors are beginning to find their stride.
“Steph is still Steph,” Nicholas explained. “They just have to find the right balance around him.”
However, he and his father claim to rarely discuss such topics. On a typical phone call, the discussions are not work-related.
Their personal relationship is “exactly the same,” Steve stated. “Nothing will change.” He’s my son, and I’m his father.”
Nicholas is unsure if he wants to follow in Steve’s footsteps as an NBA head coach; he is content with his wife and one-year-old daughter in Santa Cruz, but he understands that this is a transitory position that will only last two or three years before he must move on.
Perhaps Nicholas will be given an NBA shot elsewhere, possibly as a head coach one day.
Consider the scenario in which both Kerrs are on the court and Nicholas’ team takes the lead on a contentious call: Steve, shattering his clipboard and screaming at the officials, and Nicholas, just a few feet away, giving him a look that says, “Settle down, dad.”
Later that night, they’ll watch some baseball or soccer, break for dinner, interact with family, and then return to the TV, like they always do.
“Maybe it’s symptomatic of our relationship that when we’re together we don’t really talk, we just hang out and watch sports,” Nikolai remarked. “Nothing really needs to be said.” He’s a good father. “I am a lucky man.”
Steve feels the same way.
“There’s a saying that you’re only as happy as your least happy child,” Steve told me. “So much of being a parent is simply wanting your children to be happy, whether in a relationship or in a profession. For my wife Margot and me, seeing Nick achieve what he’s always wanted to do as a first-time father, the three of them living in Santa Cruz and enjoying their life together, it doesn’t get any better as parents. “That’s all you want.”
