Golden State Warriors coach Steve Kerr has been fairly anti-Donald Trump when asked about politics in the past, but he came out strongly against Saturday's assassination attempt on the former president.
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Kerr is currently in Abu Dhabi, the United Arab Emirates, as the head coach of Team USA, which is readying for the Paris Olympics.
"This is a time where we feel very proud to represent our country wearing USA on our chest, competing in the Olympics," Kerr said, via Brian Windhorst of ESPN. "We've talked to the players about how important it is to show the best version of us as human beings to represent our country in a respectful, dignified manner. It makes you want to do that even more so, because this is really shameful for us to sit here and think about what happened and what's going on in our country...
"Obviously what we're doing is very trivial, just playing basketball, but we want to put our best selves out there to try to give people a glimpse of what our country can be about. And then you hear something like this and it's just so demoralizing and obviously so sad."
Per Windhorst: "Kerr, whose father, Malcolm, was assassinated in 1984 in Beirut, Lebanon, has a long history of criticizing gun violence. Malcolm Kerr was targeted by the militant group Islamic Jihad because he served as the president of the American University of Beirut."
The U.S. will play a couple of exhibition games in the nation, about as far away from America as you can get. But the news involving Trump seemed to have the American squad thinking of home.
"It just adds another blemish to what's going on," said Warriors star Steph Curry. "So sad is just the word."
