Kerr’s Joy Tinged by Sadness

Steve Kerr will have one of the best seats in the house when the Lakers and San Antonio Spurs play Game 6 on Saturday night at Staples Center. And he doesn’t even have to pay for it. In fact, he gets paid to sit courtside.

Kerr, finishing his first season as a commentator for TNT, will be working the game with Marv Albert and Mike Fratello.

Barely recruited out of Palisades High, he became a second-team All-American at Arizona, where he also earned Pacific 10 All-Academic honors.

After thinking he would never make it in the NBA, he played 17 seasons. He earned five championship rings, three with the Chicago Bulls and two with the Spurs.

In the 1997 NBA Finals, after taking a pass from Michael Jordan, he made the shot that gave the Bulls their fifth of six titles.

He finished his NBA career as the all-time leader in three-point percentage at .454.

He is now excelling at his new profession, sports broadcasting.

On Saturday, on his way to Los Angeles, he’ll stop in Tucson for Arizona’s two graduation ceremonies and deliver commencement addresses at both.

He will also receive an alumni-achievement award.

He recently became part of a group that plans to buy the Phoenix Suns.

And next month Kerr, his wife Margot and their three children will move from their home in San Antonio to ritzy Rancho Santa Fe north of San Diego.

Could life be any better?

Yes, it could. His father could be around to enjoy his son’s success.

Kerr learned about terrorism long before Sept. 11.

When he was 18 and a freshman at Arizona, he got the worst kind of call, shortly after midnight on Jan. 18, 1984.

Kerr was told that his father, the president of American University in Beirut, had been killed by terrorists.

Malcolm Kerr, 52, was shot by two gunmen as he left his office. They were never caught. “It’s not something I talk about very often,” Kerr said from his home in San Antonio. “But of course it has had a big impact on my life.

“All the cliches apply -- enjoy each day, live life to its fullest, spend time with your family. It’s how I live my life. You never know what can happen.”

Publicly, Kerr downplays his father’s death. He realizes that tragedies occur in the lives of many, and this one happened more than 20 years ago.

But these days, there are reminders nearly every day, as the impact of terrorism is felt throughout the world.

“Sure, I read the stories,” Kerr said. “Probably more than most people. But sometimes I just have to stop. It is all too depressing.”

The Kerr Family

Malcolm Kerr, a political science professor, was on the UCLA faculty for 20 years but lived and worked all over the world.

He met his wife, Ann Zwicker, in Beirut when he was doing post-Princeton graduate work. She was spending her junior year at Occidental College abroad. They were married in 1957 and had four children.

Steve, the second-youngest, was born in Beirut.

His family brought him to Los Angeles when he was 2, but later he lived in Oxford, the south of France, Tunisia and Cairo.

He came from Cairo to Pacific Palisades, enrolling in Palisades High as a sophomore.

Because both his parents taught at UCLA, for a while he was a Bruin ball boy for the basketball team. He would have loved to have played there.

“They were recruiting McDonald’s All-Americans,” Kerr said. “I was hardly a McDonald’s All-American.”

At Arizona, he played a lot as a freshman, was a starter by his sophomore year, and became a fan favorite.

Was he an overachiever?

“One can achieve his potential,” Kerr likes to say. “One can’t overachieve.”

He says one reason he is moving to California is to be closer to his mother, who lives in Pacific Palisades and works at UCLA.

She is the school’s coordinator of the Fulbright Scholarship program, which helps students study abroad.

The Task at Hand

Kerr spent the last four seasons playing for the Spurs. This season, besides working for TNT, he was also a local television commentator for the Spurs.

Obviously, he remains close to Spur players and Coach Gregg Popovich.

“I’d be lying if I said I didn’t have some allegiance to them,” Kerr said. “Some of my best friends are on that team. All I can do is be honest and call what I see.”

Kerr also points out that he spent five seasons with Laker Coach Phil Jackson in Chicago.

“I’d be thrilled for Pop if the Spurs win the series, but I will be for Phil too, if the Lakers win.”

Kerr appears to have learned something from his world travels. He’s pretty diplomatic.

Short Waves

CBS has turned off the “Neon.” The network has said goodbye to Deion Sanders. According to Rudy Martzke of USA Today, Sanders sought to double his $1-million-a-year salary and make about what Terry Bradshaw and Howie Long make at Fox. Bradshaw reportedly makes $2.5 million a year, Long $1.5 million. Sanders rejected $1.3 million.

Has Sanders checked the ratings lately? He could end up at ESPN, where his friend Michael Irvin works. But if Sanders thinks he can get $2 million there, then “Neon Deion” is not too bright.

Tom Hammond, along with Bob Costas, will conduct NBC’s Preakness coverage Saturday, then hop up to New York to join Pat Haden in calling Sunday’s Arena Football League game between the Avengers and New York Dragons.

Hammond says he finds the AFL fun and different.

“The best thing is, we haven’t met any overpriced jerks among the players,” he said.

He could probably say the same thing about the horses at Pimlico.

Remember Bill Weir, the witty sports anchor at Channel 7 who dropped out of sight about two years ago? Word is, he will probably resurface on network television in September as a co-host of a new weekend edition of ABC’s “Good Morning America.” Robin Roberts is being mentioned as the other host.

Weir, who said he would defer any announcement to the network, was asked what he has been doing.

“Well, my days go like this,” he said. “I get up about 10, put on my robe, watch the X box, then wander down to the liquor store about 4,” Weir quipped.

Actually, he has been doing some screenwriting for television.

Game 4 of the Laker-Spur series, televised by TNT, was watched in 947,000 homes in the L.A. market. Game 3 on ABC on Sunday afternoon was watched in 878,000, even though it was available in about 25% more homes. So 7:30 games may draw bigger audiences in L.A., but what about the rest of the nation?

A TNT spokesman said research showed that doubleheaders in the 5 and 7:30 p.m. time slots did better than any others nationally.

Monday night’s dramatic game between Minnesota and Sacramento didn’t end until 11 p.m. -- 2 a.m. in the East -- but the national rating was a 3.1 at the end. Overall, the game averaged a 3.0.

In Closing

Did Max Kellerman do the right thing by leaving ESPN for Fox Sports Net? Consider this: On Monday, the day Kellerman’s show, “I, Max,” made its debut on Fox Sports Net, it drew only 50,000 viewers nationally and got a 0.0 rating. The same day, Kellerman’s former ESPN show, “Around the Horn,” drew 420,000 viewers nationally.