"God, I hope I don't get into this game. I'm not ready for this stuff" - Steve Kerr said watching Michael Jordan for the first time made him feel he didn't belong in NBA originally appeared on Basketball Network .
Steve Kerr was fresh out of the University of Arizona in 1988, an unheralded second-round pick clinging to his NBA dream. He had barely unpacked his bags when the Chicago Bulls , led by a 25-year-old Michael Jordan , already reshaping the boundaries of athletic dominance, showed up for a preseason exhibition.
The Phoenix Suns guard wasn't even sure he belonged. The thought of going toe-to-toe with NBA royalty was unsettling enough, but watching Jordan up close — every twitch of muscle, every pivot, every glance that hinted at destruction — planted a different kind of doubt.
Watching the greatest of all time play at a top level, even in preseason, was Kerr's welcome to the NBA moment, and it didn't come with applause. It came with fear.
"I was just trying to make the roster," he recalled . "And Michael Jordan gets the ball right in front of our bench and I'm already scared to death. Like, 'God, I hope I don't get into this game. I'm not ready for this stuff … I'm looking like there's no way in hell I can ever make the NBA. I really don't want that."
The man who would later hit title-clinching shots for Jordan's Bulls and coach the Golden State Warriors to four championships with a style soaked in Jordan-era precision once stared at the Bulls icon and wanted to run the other way. But that fear was the kind of honest reckoning that lives at the heart of every athlete's journey. And it spoke volumes about how mythic Jordan had already become, even before the first of his six rings.
Jordan was already generational by the late '80s. Coming off back-to-back scoring titles and an MVP campaign in 1988, he'd already dropped 63 in a playoff game against the Boston Celtics and hung 40 on everyone from Dominique Wilkins to Magic Johnson.
For a 6-foot-3 sharpshooter like Kerr, never the fastest or strongest, witnessing that up close was intimidating and disorienting.
The Bulls' system under Doug Collins was chaotic but effective. MJ had the ball constantly and his teammates were mostly spectators.
It was the same Jordan who averaged 35.0 points per game that season on 53.5 percent shooting, numbers that hadn't been seen since Wilt Chamberlain. And while most players internalized that greatness as a target, Kerr initially processed it as a mirror and the reflection was sobering. But it didn't end there.
Over time, what started as paralysis became fuel. Kerr clawed his way onto the Cleveland Cavaliers roster, then to the Orlando Magic , before landing with the Bulls in 1993.
By the time Jordan returned from baseball in 1995, Kerr was no longer the rattled rookie. He was the guy who knew exactly what his role was. The man who once hoped to be invisible now wanted the ball with seconds ticking off the clock.
That evolution was no accident. It came from years of absorbing Jordan's impossible standards and adjusting accordingly. By 1997, Kerr was calling for the pass. And when Jordan kicked it to him in Game 6 of the Finals against the Utah Jazz , he didn't hesitate. He buried the shot that sealed the championship.
Kerr's journey is often told in highlights, those three Bulls rings, the pivotal jumper, his later success coaching Stephen Curry and building a dynasty. But the root of it lives in that early fear. That first brush with excellence was so profound it made the game feel unplayable. That internal spiral that makes or breaks a career.
What's striking is how Kerr, who would go on to shoot over 45 percent from 3-point range over his career — one of the best in league history — was once convinced he didn't belong in the NBA. The same man who'd play 910 NBA games and make key contributions to five championship teams almost bowed out before it all began, overwhelmed by the sheer presence of someone playing the same game at a different frequency.
And yet, that presence became the compass.
By the time Kerr took over the Warriors in 2014, Jordan was a model. The precision, the killer instinct, the refusal to settle. That DNA ran through the Warriors' system too, modernized through ball movement and spacing, but grounded in the same demand for excellence. In many ways, Kerr's coaching voice became the echo of everything he once feared.
This story was originally reported by Basketball Network on Jul 1, 2025, where it first appeared.
