NBA Finals: Israel and the Other Coach!
When it comes to the 2015 NBA Finals, much attention in the Jewish and
Israeli media has been devoted to David Blatt, the Jewish head coach of
the Cleveland Cavaliers who led Israel’s Maccabi Tel Aviv hoops franchise
to a European basketball championship during the season before landing
his current gig. But there is another Israel-related angle to the Finals
that seemingly nobody is talking about.
In 1984, Middle East expert Malcolm Kerr—the president of American
University of Beirut and the father of Steve Kerr, who is now the head
coach of the Golden State Warriors—was assassinated by Muslim terrorists
from the Lebanese group that eventually became known as Hezbollah.
In fact, Steve Kerr spent much of his childhood in Lebanon, and at the
time of the murder of his father was playing college basketball for the
University of Arizona.
Steve Kerr went on to win five championships as an NBA player, three
with the Chicago Bulls and two with the San Antonio Spurs. Now, he has
a chance to add a championship as a coach in just his first year with
the Warriors, who face the Cavaliers in the Finals starting on Thursday
night.
Blatt has said that when Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu reached
to him last week, Netanyahu assured that “all of Israel is behind
the Cavaliers.” Yet with the family of the Warriors’ coach being
a victim of Hezbollah, the Lebanon-based terrorist group that is sworn
to Israel’s destruction, perhaps there is also a reason for the pro-Israel
community to pull for Golden State.
[from an article by Jacob Kamaras for //JNS.org, as posted on //Algemeiner.com.]
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