Yahoo Sports senior NBA reporter Jake Fischer and senior NBA writer Dan Devine discuss the Warriors head coach’s decision to step down from leading the men’s national team after winning the gold medal in Paris. Listen to the entire conversation on No Cap Room and subscribe on or wherever you listen.
Video transcript
Steve Kerr will reportedly not continue as U SAS basketball coach, which we expected and discussed.
We also discussed Erik Spoelstra or Tyr Liu, who were Steve Kerr’s assistants during his last term, as likely candidates to succeed him.
Kerr also gave a speech at the Democratic National Convention this week, sparking rumors that he plans to pursue a political career after his coaching career.
I have my limited knowledge about Steve Kerr.
I would not expect him to continue to cater to the vagaries of public opinion when he lashes out at Twitter coaches in his speech to the party conference.
So I don’t know if that will be the case in the future, but congratulations, Steve Kerr, on his gold medal and even more opportunities to show American patriotism.
Yes, he is, as he wants, 58 years old, uh, and he still has a lot to accomplish as an NBA coach.
I would not recommend enjoying retirement if you actually reach retirement age.
Uh, Coach K, I don’t think you need that, you’ve had quite a few wins in your life as a professional athlete and coach.
Um, one thing I’ve been thinking about is whether we should end his tenure on Team USA.
He started as an assistant in 2019 and it feels like an eternity ago.
I mean, of course the world has changed dramatically in the last five years, but it was challenging being part of Pop’s crew, so to speak, and then that transition and the awkwardness of preparing for the 2019 World Cup, which the USA lost, and then losing the actual 2021 Olympics in Tokyo.
But he, Team USA or USA Basketball, puts the friendlies in anyone’s record.
So Steve Kerr can say he’s retiring as head coach of the U.S. national team with a record of 21-3, even though 10 of those were, uh, exhibition games or pre-tournament games. I thought that was pretty nice.
We want to make sure that you leave feeling good, that you finish the event with the best performance possible and that you end up with a gold medal.
And then we somehow write down the medal for fourth place, and you know, with all the losses, there is no medal for fourth place.
That made it even worse.
Do you know what this is?
This goes back to how old I am, how frail and dying.
Um, “Fourth Place Medal” was the name of the, um, Olympic blog when the young sports blogs started, um, and I found the blog name.
It was a medal for fourth place.
It was a good blog name.
We had a lot of good blog names.
Paul, don’t lie.
Um, but yeah, Steve Kerr will, I mean, yeah, walk off into the sunset, leave, disappear while he still can, because whoever’s turn it is in LA in 2028 is going to have some other issues to deal with, um, given the way the world is evolving around the American Basketball Association.
