Golden State Warriors head coach Steve Kerr couldn’t help himself on Wednesday.
Reporters at Chase Center were already packing up after practice. Recorders were off, notebooks were closed and nobody had asked about Washington. Kerr stopped the room anyway, asking why there were no questions on Tuesday’s midterms before launching straight into his routine.
“I’m disappointed, because I was looking forward to that $5,000 check that we were all gonna get,” Kerr said, taking a swipe at President Trump.
“I already spent it, in fact. And I was so excited and sure about it that I spent it already. So now I’m gonna have to figure something out.”
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Republicans had just gotten shellacked at the ballot box, and Kerr was dying to talk about it. Don’t kid yourself: if Democrats had lost, he would’ve clammed up and kept politics far away from the microphone, just like he did with China.
But with the GOP taking a beating, Kerr wasn’t about to walk off without taking a victory lap.
It’s no secret Kerr is a bleed-blue lib, and midterm thumpings are par for the course.
What made his post-practice comedy set so grating wasn’t who won or lost on Tuesday. It was the shameless double standard on full display.
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After endorsing Kamala Harris, taking the stage as a featured speaker at the Democratic National Convention, and co-opting Stephen Curry’s signature “night night” celebration to mock Donald Trump, Kerr suddenly tried to play the elder statesman.
Even Warriors brass and league figures had grown visibly exhausted by the routine, with team owner Joe Lacob publicly conceding Kerr “sometimes goes a little far” with his political diatribes.
Confronted with his own record, Kerr’s moral posturing dissolved into corporate cowardice. He admitted his silence on China’s atrocities in Hong Kong was transactional, aimed solely at protecting the NBA’s financial interests. To complete the convenient rebrand, he claimed he regretted calling Trump a “buffoon,” piously lecturing that political debate should rise above the very insults he had spent years dishing out.
The real issue is that Kerr loves playing political commentator only when he controls the script and faces zero pushback. When actually held to the facts, the highbrow disappears.
Back in January, I pressed Kerr at Chase Center over his comments regarding federal immigration enforcement. After a road trip to Minnesota, he told reporters that ICE agents were not rooting out violent criminals, claiming instead that they were taking 5-year-old kindergartners and American citizens.
Confronted with the agency’s actual enforcement record and criminal arrest numbers, Kerr folded.
“You’re right, I definitely misspoke, and I knew that ICE was arresting some criminals,” Kerr admitted. “I misspoke, and I apologize for the misinformation…”
When I pressed for a follow-up question, Kerr shut down the exchange entirely, abruptly telling the room to move on: “All right, let’s talk about basketball.”
That pivot was his immediate exit ramp the moment he got caught spreading misinformation. He used the sport as a shield to kill the scrutiny.
Yet on Wednesday, when a room full of sports reporters actually stuck to basketball, Kerr went out of his way to drag politics right back to the podium.
If Kerr wants to treat the post-practice podium like his personal open-mic night, he can’t cry foul and sprint back to basketball the second he gets fact-checked.
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