NBA Head Coaches Steve Kerr & Gregg Popovich Along With NFL Head Coach Pete Carroll Speak On Colin Kaepernick: “We Owe A Tremendous Amount To Him”

In a recent episode of Gregg Popovich’s Flying Coach podcast, Steve Kerr and Pete Carroll spoke about Colin Kaepernick and said that his peaceful protest years ago, was overlooked and that “we owe a tremendous amount to him.”

“[Kaepernick] took a stand on something, figuratively took a knee, but he stood up for something he believed in— and what an extraordinary moment it was that he was willing to take,” Carroll stated. “It’s still the statement that we’re making right today. We’re not protecting our people. We’re not looking after one another. We’re not making the right choices. We’re not following the right process to bring people to justice when actions are taken. So I think it was a big sacrifice in the sense that a young man makes, but those are the courageous moments that some guys take. And we owe a tremendous amount to him for sure.”

As Kerr looked back on Kaepernick’s kneeling protest from 2016, he compared it to the protests worldwide today, in response to the recent murder of George Floyd.

“To me, it’s really hard to look at what’s going on right now with all the violence and the protests and not look back to four years ago and say, ‘Look, this guy was trying to peacefully protest, and nothing came of it,” Kerr expressed. “The killings went on, and nothing changed, and he was actually ridiculed, so it’s a real tough one to think about.”

Popovich shared how he had trouble explaining the death of Floyd to his 8-year-old daughter. He explained how he had to turn the television off because he was “dumbfounded.”

“I was dumbfounded,” Popovich shared. “And then I thought, ‘Should I have left it on and explained it to her? Or how do I explain it to her now that I have turned it off?’ I made some feeble attempt, but I didn’t know how far to go, how deep to go. What age is it? Is she ready or not ready?

Then I thought, ‘Wow, that’s a problem for me.’ And then I thought, ‘What about a black family?’ You think they have a problem talking to their kids and figuring out what’s going on here? So it’s so convoluted and complicated that everything sort of fades away if we don’t have that initial admission, that sorrowful recognition of what went on in the past and what has continued.”