Before the fourth game that the Dallas Mavericks beat the Golden State Warriors 119-109 in the NBA Western Conference finals, Steve Kerr, the coach of the San Francisco team, decided not to talk about basketball. The technician sat down, and remarkably moved, made a strong catharsis about what happened on Tuesday in Texas, where a teenager generated a massacre in a school where 19 children and two adults died. I’m not going to talk about basketball, no basketball-related questions matter,” he said as soon as he began to speak to the press. And then he focused on the tragic episode: “Since we left training, about fourteen children were killed 400 miles (645 km) from here, and a teacher. In the last 10 days, we’ve had old people and blacks killed in a supermarket in Buffalo, we’ve had Asian parishioners killed in Southern California, now we have kids killed in school.” As he made his discharge, Kerr did not hide his indignation at the recurrent acts of violence that occurred in the United States. “When are we going to do something? I am tired. I’m so tired of going up here and offering condolences to the devastated families who are out there,” he said, his voice cracking. He added: “I’m so tired. Forgive me. I am sorry. I’m tired of moments of silence. Enough is enough.”
In that vein, the coach took aim at senators to debate a gun control law. “There are 50 senators right now who refuse to vote on the law to ban gun control, which is a background check rule that the House passed a couple of years ago. She has been sitting there for two years. There’s a reason they won’t vote for him: to cling to power. I ask you, Mitch McConnell, all the senators who refuse to do anything about violence, school shootings, supermarket shootings, I ask you: Are you going to put your own desire for power before the lives of our children, the elderly, and our parishioners? Because that’s what it sounds like. That’s what we do every week.” I’m fed up. I’ve had enough. We’re going to play the game tonight. But I want every person here, every person who hears this, to think about their own child or grandson, mother or father, sister, brother. How would you feel if this happened to you today? We cannot become insensitive to this. We can’t sit here and just read about this and say, well, ‘Let’s have a moment of silence and play a basketball game.'” In closing, Kerr again accused his country’s politicians. “Fifty senators in Washington are going to take us hostage. Do you realize that 90 percent of Americans, regardless of their political party, want universal background checks? We are hostages of 50 senators in Washington who refuse to even put it to a vote, despite what we Americans want. They won’t vote for him because they want to cling to their own power. It’s pathetic. I’ve had enough,” he concluded by banging on the table before leaving the room.
