Golden State Warriors head coach Steve Kerr has never been afraid to speak his mind. Kerr has been among the most vocal sports figures when it comes to political commentary, providing strong statements on complex and controversial topics when other coaches would avoid them all together.
But sometimes even he admits he isn’t completely in the right. Kerr revealed the one regretful comment he made about President Donald Trump and admitted he gave a “weak” statement after then-Houston Rockets general manager Daryl Morey tweeted out support for Hong Kong.
Kerr’s comments came during a wide-ranging interview with the New Yorker. While that interview began with basketball questions, it eventually turned to politics, where Kerr admitted there have been times in the past where he needed to tone down his rhetoric.
Following Trump’s first election win in 2016, Kerr delivered a passionate speech on his concerns about Trump’s first term. Since then, however, he said he learned that he needed to represent “our organization in a way that I could still let my feelings be known but not get too personal. I’m representing a large group of people.”
That didn’t stop Kerr from criticizing Trump over the years, though. Kerr has spoken out against the president multiple times, advocating for gun control, condemning racist tweets and defending athletes’ right to take a knee during the national anthem.
But there is one Trump comment Kerr said he regretted: When he called the president a “buffoon.” Kerr said that while he felt that at the time, he would have been better off focusing on Trump’s actual policy and not resorting to name-calling, per the New Yorker.
“Calling the President a buffoon, I kind of regret that, even though I felt it in my heart. It’s better to point out policy decisions, but also American values. What’s wrong with the things that he does.”
Kerr also said that he did not handle the league’s China controversy well. The NBA was scrambling to do damage control after Morey tweeted support for Hong Kong protesters in 2019. Morey deleted his tweet and the NBA was quick to condemn Morey’s actions. The NBA lost sponsorship money in China due to Morey’s statement, which led to the league’s response.
Kerr — who at that point had shown a willingness to speak out on controversial topics — gave a surprisingly muted response to the situation, saying he wasn’t going to comment on the matter. Trump criticized Kerr’s unwillingness to engage with the topic, calling the coach a “little boy.”
Kerr told the New Yorker that he regretted how he handled that situation in the moment.
I gave a really weak answer. I was trying to walk the line.
You regret that?
Yeah. I was wrong. We had a lot of players on our team that were doing business in China. A lot of our players would go there offseason. The NBA had this huge relationship with China. But, of course, thousands of American companies had trade and relations with China. And so the NBA just got caught up in all of this and I didn’t handle it well. I was trying to walk the company line and not make the NBA mad.
While Kerr has been outspoken on numerous political issues, he said he has no desire to go into politics, and that he loves basketball too much.
Whether he sticks around the game in the immediate future remains to be seen, though. Following the Warriors’ final loss of the season, microphones caught Kerr telling Draymond Green and Stephen Curry that the coach wasn’t sure what was going to happen next.
Kerr echoed those comments at the end of his New Yorker interview, saying he doesn’t want to abandon both players, but that he would talk through the decision with the Warriors soon.
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