Basketball always seemed to be in the cards for Nick Kerr.

The son of Golden State Warriors head coach Steve Kerr, Nick grew up in Chicago in the ’90s while his father was playing with Michael Jordan’s Chicago Bulls on three straight NBA championship teams.

Nick Kerr’s basketball journey brings him back to San Diego on Wednesday. The Torrey Pines High School and University of San Diego graduate will coach his Santa Cruz Warriors against the San Diego Clippers during a 7 p.m. game at Frontwave Arena in Oceanside. Santa Cruz will return to Oceanside next week for another showdown between the G League teams. San Diego’s Clippers moved west from Ontario last fall; this marks their first season at the new arena.

“Growing up in San Diego, it’s such an underrated basketball town,” the 32-year-old Kerr said. “It’s a city that really pays attention to its local basketball, and adding a team to that can only help.”

From Torrey Pines to USD

Steve Kerr retired from the NBA in 2003 after winning his fifth championship, this one as a member of the San Antonio Spurs. The Kerrs relocated to Rancho Santa Fe, where Nick — a middle-schooler — began to think about his future in basketball.

“I knew I would want to coach probably by the time I was 10 or 11, but before that I wanted to play somewhere high-level,” he said.

That meant enrolling at Torrey Pines High School, perennially one of the top programs in the county.

Much like his father, who still holds the top 3-point shooting percentage in NBA history, Nick Kerr developed a reputation as a perimeter shooter. He knocked down a school record 279 3-pointers and poured in more than 1,400 points as a three-year starter for coach John Olive. He averaged 19.5 points per game as a junior and 15.1 points per game as a senior.

“He always did the little things,” Olive said of Kerr. “And he was always ahead of the game defensively, which gives you an indication of his feel for the game.”

Kerr signed with the University of San Diego, and spent 2012 to ’15 with the Toreros before transferring to Cal for a graduate season. He began his coaching career with the Spurs, serving as an intern in the team’s video room. Kerr returned to the Bay Area in 2018, joining the Warriors — and his father, the team’s championship-winning head coach — as a video coordinator. In 2021, joined Golden State’s G League affiliate, the Santa Cruz Warriors, as an assistant coach.

Nick Kerr was named head coach of the Santa Cruz team prior to the 2023-24 season. In his first year, he led the Warriors to the G League’s Western Conference semifinals.

Coach Kerr

Even as he was starring at Torrey Pines, Kerr figured coaching would be in his future. An interaction with a future NBA player made it clear.

“We played Lincoln and Norman Powell the summer before my senior year, and I realized playing professionally wasn’t gonna be in my future,” he said. “I was being guarded by Norman and realized, ‘I can’t get a shot off against this guy.’”

Kerr played sparingly across his two stops in college, seeing action in 47 games. It’s something he says has helped him in his coaching career.

“The never-playing part is good to go through if you’re going to coach because you’ll always have guys on your bench that either play very little or not as much as they want,” he said. “It’s good to know what they’re going through and to keep them as invested as possible and ready to play.”

Kerr says he has picked up information from his coaches and teammates over the years.

“At USD, we were really detail-oriented defensively,” he said. “And with the Spurs, they were so organized and helped me learn the transition from being a player to a coach and what that entails.”

The G League is wide open offensively: 30 of the league’s 31 teams average more than 100 points per game. That doesn’t mean Kerr’s players have the green light to play a selfish style of basketball while trying to showcase themselves to NBA clubs.

“Golden State doesn’t care who closes the game for us. If guys aren’t doing the right things, then I’m allowed to take them out and bench them because we think that’s part of winning,” he said. “It’s not just about playing 32 minutes in the G League and having a license to do whatever you want. If guys aren’t doing the right thing, then they need to be told that, but I haven’t had to worry about that this year.”

‘It normally goes hand in hand’

The contrast between college and pro basketball remains significant and can pose an issue for young players.

“There’s usually an adjustment with just how much faster our game is,” Kerr said. “It’s so much harder to create an opening in the college game. In our league, everyone is so talented offensively that it’s easier to create an advantage.”

The first part of the G League season is spent with teams competing in a Tip-Off Tournament, culminating in the G League Winter Showcase in Orlando. Team records were reset after the event, and the league’s 34-game regular season began late last month.

Kerr has Santa Cruz sitting at 6-3 in the early going, while working to balance winning with developing players for the NBA level.

“It’s nice in that it normally goes hand in hand,” Kerr said. “If you’re helping guys get better at the right things, you generally become a better team and win.”

G League basketball: Santa Cruz Warriors (6-3) at San Diego Clippers (5-4)

When: 7 p.m. Wednesday

Where: Frontwave Arena, Oceanside

Originally Published: January 21, 2025 at 12:24 PM PST