Your I Love Steve Kerr moment for today

There are all sorts of reasons to admire Steve Kerr, beginning with his thoughtful and articulate insight on national issues, especially when it comes to pointing out how often Our Current Emperor is prancing about naked.

Steve Kerr doesn't give a damn if you think it's not a basketball coach's place to say such things. The opinion of trolls is so much noise to him. And that is only awesome.

So is this: His unwitting admission that preseason NBA games are an immense waste of time.

Let us take you now to the Oracle in Oakland, Calif., where Kerr's Golden State Warriors were playing the Phoenix Suns in one of those aforementioned preseason games. This being the era when even summer-league NBA games are televised, it was no doubt being televised somewhere for the benefit of those sad cases who are lacking in meaningful lives. In any case, they were playin', and Steve Kerr was coachin'.

Until, that is, he got tossed for coming onto the floor to protest a call.

At which time he said this: "I don't want to be here anyway."

How great is that? 

Because, look, bald-faced honesty is always an appealing quality, and this was bald-faced honesty at its best. I mean, it's an NBA preseason game. Unless you're roster filler trying desperately to hang onto the last seat on an NBA bench, who does want to be there?

The whole thing reminds me of a certain former high school coach in Fort Wayne, whose identity shall remain a secret. All I'll say is his teams were routinely some of the best in the Summit Athletic Conference. And so one year before the SAC Holiday Tournament, I rang him up to get a few quotes.

"So how do you see the holiday tournament, Coach?" I asked, or something to that effect.

"I couldn't care less about that thing," he replied.

Then he said he'd always hated this tournament, because it meant the kids (and the coaches) didn't get a holiday break, and they all needed a break. It was a long season. Why screw up the only pause in it by making them play a bunch of meaningless extra games?

"I don't put any emphasis on (the holiday tournament) at all," Coach Shall Go Unnamed said. "I'd rather have the break."

Needless to say, this sort of unvarnished honesty was shocking. I asked Coach if I could quote him.

"Sure, go ahead," he said.

 And so I did. It might have been the greatest quote I ever got.  The fact a lot of us in the media (or at least me) secretly hated the SAC Holiday Tournament ourselves, and for the same reasons Coach did, made it all the greater.

So good on you, Steve Kerr. And thanks for being someone who's had never had to be asked what he really thinks.