NBA
At first, Steve Kerr said it was hard to describe.
The Warriors had navigated an emotional week — a “heartbreaking” and “devastating” one, Kerr added — n which assistant coach Dejan Milojevic died Wednesday after he suffered a heart attack while at a team dinner on Tuesday.
They returned to practice Monday, with Kerr addressing reporters while wearing a black shirt with “brate,” which means brother in Serbian, and Milojevic’s initials surrounded by a heart printed on the front.
“It’s just the saddest thing I’ve ever been a part of in the NBA,” Kerr told reporters, “where we lose someone who’s so close to us and then, more importantly, seeing his family suffer. So this last week has been, the last five days, I guess, has been full of all of the above. The shock. The emotion. The extreme outpouring of love from all over the world.”
Kerr described Milojevic, who was 46, as someone who “saw the good in people and the joy in life,” and for the past two-plus seasons, they overlapped on the Warriors’ coaching staff and won a title together during the 2021-22 season.
The Warriors, as a team, watched the ceremony at the KK Partizan-KK Mega Basket game — featuring teams that Milojevic played and coached for, respectively — in Belgrade, where the scene of fans chanting inside the gym showed what Milojevic “meant to his countrymen,” Kerr said.
“I’m not sure I’ve ever seen anything like the pregame dedication from the fans and the organizations there to Deki,” Kerr said.
Milojevic, who played 14 seasons in Europe before transitioning into coaching, would laugh and have a “gleam in his eye” even when pushing the rest of the Warriors’ coaching staff during their meetings, allowing him to be “very direct and honest without threatening anyone,” Kerr said.
Other players from around the NBA also posted memories and messages remembering Milojevic following his death, including Warriors shooting guard Brandin Podziemski, who wrote on X that “You changed my life in such a short time.”
In his press conference Monday, Kerr also thanked commissioner Adam Silver, the Mavericks and the Jazz for postponing the games and navigating the scheduling logistics to eventually get the games rescheduled.
“There’s no way any of us could have walked out onto a court and played a basketball game either Wednesday or Friday,” Kerr said.
Ron Adams, one of Kerr’s mentors, became someone who he leaned on when figuring out how to help the Warriors move forward, and at one point, Kerr asked, “How do we go on from here?”
Adams, a 76-year-old on Kerr’s staff since he took over the Warriors in 2014, thought for a moment, Kerr recalled.
Then, he asked what Milojevic would’ve wanted the Warriors to do.
“I literally could picture Deki smiling and laughing and saying, ‘You motherf–kers need to go win a basketball game,’” Kerr said. … That’s exactly what he would’ve said, with a smile on his face.
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