""When Andy approached me about this, it was a no-brainer," Steve Kerr tells ESPN. It was August 2023 and exactly the kind of offer the nine-time NBA champion wanted: to join friends at a top division team and in a place composer Frédéric Chopin claimed was the most beautiful on earth. "A wonderful opportunity," the Golden State Warriors coach calls it. There was just one problem: right time, right place ... wrong sport?"
"The man with the proposal, sitting smiling alongside Kerr as the rising sun reflects on Camelback Mountain, was Andy Kohlberg. The team the New York-born former tennis player -- once a Wimbledon semifinalist, no less -- wanted Kerr to join was RCD Mallorca. From a Spanish island 6,000 miles away, Mallorca play soccer, not basketball. Kerr wasn't invited to coach the LaLiga club, either ... although, thinking about it, that's not a bad idea, Kohlberg smiles."
"It could be the start of a joke -- a tennis player, a basketball player and a footballer walk into Mallorca -- but it was serious. Deliberate, too. Sport was the key, what brought the ownership group together and bound them, the "connective tissue" in Nash's phrase. Which sport didn't matter, although it begins with basketball and ends in football, the two sports -- accessible, universal -- that Kohlberg was convinced would grow most."
Steve Kerr joined an ownership group for RCD Mallorca in August 2023 alongside Andy Kohlberg, Steve Nash and Stu Holden. The move was a part-ownership role rather than a coaching appointment, prompted by long-standing personal and Phoenix Suns connections among the group. Mallorca is described as a stunning island destination that appealed to the investors. The group emphasizes sport as the unifying element, with a belief that basketball and football—accessible, universal sports—offer the strongest growth opportunities. The collaboration blends backgrounds from tennis, basketball and football into a deliberate investment in the LaLiga club.
Read at ESPN.com
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