Steve Kerr says Trump's immigration ban is 'going against the principles of what our country is about'
Kerr, who was critical of Trump's election, said that the order, which bars citizens of Iran, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria and Yemen from traveling to the US, would have the opposite effect intended.
"I would just say that as someone whose family member was a victim of terrorism, having lost my father, if we're trying to combat terrorism by banishing people from coming to this country, by really going against the principles of what our country is about and creating fear, it's the wrong way of going about it," Kerr said.
"If anything, we could be breeding anger and terror. So I'm completely against what's happening."
Kerr's father, Malcolm, was a professor at American University of Beirut. He was murdered by an Islamic jihadist while serving as president of the university in 1984. Steve was in college at University of Arizona at the time.
"I think it's shocking. It's a horrible idea," Kerr said. "I feel for all the people that are affected. Families are being torn apart, and I worry in the big picture what this means to the security of the world. It's going about it completely opposite. You want to solve terror, you want to solve crime, this is not the way to do it."
On Sunday, San Antonio Spurs head coach Gregg Popovich, who has also been critical of Trump, addressed the ban, calling it "Keystone Kop-like," a reference to an incompetent police force from silent films in the early 20th century.
"As you already know, I have lots of thoughts about what we've done to ourselves as a country, what we have allowed to happen," Popovich said. "But we'll see where this goes."
He continued, "Obviously, the rollout today is Keystone Kop-like, by any measure of objectivity. Whether you want to say it is good or bad is irrelevant, but it was Keystone Kops. And that's scary."