Steve Kerr might just be the most interesting man in the NBA.

His multifaceted life started in Beirut, where - 18 years later - his father was assassinated. He played at the University of Arizona on a national semifinalist team. And his professional playing days involved fistfights and championships with Michael Jordan.

He can regale people with stories about some of the NBA's most buzzworthy names, but he seems uncomfortable - even shy - when talking about his own exploits.

"It's not good practice as a coach," said Kerr, who had two successful broadcasting stints at TNT in between his playing days and getting the Warriors' head-coaching job in May. "I'm probably going to piss off my TNT buddies, because I'm going to turn off my microphone when they (broadcast our games). It should not be about my huddles. It should be about the players. As soon as the coach becomes the one in the spotlight, you know you're headed for trouble."

Kerr loves to reflect on experiences with Jordan, Scottie Pippen, Dennis Rodman, Phil Jackson and Gregg Popovich, and he beams when peeking into the Warriors' future with co-owner Joe Lacob, President Rick Welts, executive board member Jerry West and point guard Stephen Curry.

But the time has to come to expand on his own captivating story.

The winner of five NBA championships, Kerr has been chosen to lead the once-laughingstock Golden State franchise past its consecutive honorable mentions in the NBA playoffs. Warriors management made it clear that 98 regular-season and nine playoff victories during the past two seasons were not enough.

They fired Mark Jackson and sought Kerr - without a day of meaningful coaching experience - to shepherd their developing roster into champions with a lineup that pales in comparison to the ones that helped him reach those pinnacles as a player.

"I think what really helped me was being able to see how the pieces fit," said Kerr, who played on six NBA teams - often as one of the last players off the bench. "You have different needs at different positions, but ultimately, the puzzle has to fit. I just always figured out how to forge a role."

Hometown: L.A. area

Kerr, 48, was born in Beirut, but he considers the Los Angeles area his hometown - the place he moved as a toddler and the place where he spent much of his youth falling in love with basketball at UCLA games. The emotions flood back when Kerr describes his childhood memories from Pauley Pavilion.

The sellout crowds. The band playing. The No. 1-ranked team in the country taking the floor with Lew Alcindor or Bill Walton manning the middle.

John Wooden guided UCLA to three undefeated seasons (1966-67, 1971-72, 1972-73) and 10 national titles in 12 years (1964-75) with Kerr paying close attention from the stands and then eventually as a ballboy.

"You felt what was happening at Pauley, and for me, it was like, 'It's over. This is what I love,' " Kerr said. "I would cry when they lost. Fortunately, I had to cry only once every three years or so."

Kerr's father, Malcolm, was a Middle East scholar and a professor at UCLA from 1964 to 1976, ultimately being promoted to chairman of the political science department and dean of social sciences. He would frequently take his family with him on sabbaticals to the Middle East, and Kerr has memories of staying in a mountain cabin above Beirut.

The family later lived several years in Cairo, where Kerr attended school in the sixth, ninth and 10th grades. Kerr and his older brother would wait eagerly for the International Herald Tribune to arrive and scour through 5-day-old sports scores.

"By the time I was in the sixth grade, sure, I knew what we were doing was very outside the ordinary," Kerr said. "I didn't really like it much. ... Leaving L.A., to me, meant leaving my friends and leaving the sports scene that I loved."

When Kerr returned to Los Angeles for good before his junior and senior years, he had become the typical high school sports star, deciding to concentrate on basketball and baseball after also standing out in football and soccer in junior high. His accomplishments came from his work ethic, intelligence and ability to master skills - not from his size or speed.

When he finished his senior basketball season in the winter at Pacific Palisades High in Los Angeles, Kerr didn't have a single scholarship offer, so when late-summer offers came from Arizona and Cal State Fullerton, he leaped at the chance to play in Tucson.

Total team player

"If you were to ask me one thing I'd change about Steve Kerr, I haven't found it yet," former Arizona coach Lute Olson said. "For him, everything begins and ends with the team. It always has."

Kerr got to Arizona just as Olson took over a four-win team and was beginning the program's transformation. After expecting to be overmatched by his teammates, Kerr clawed his way to becoming the sixth man as a freshman.

By his sophomore season, he was the team's starting point guard, and despite the dramatically improving roster around him, Kerr managed to hold off challengers for his spot for the next few years.

But life dramatically changed for Kerr after he received a 3 a.m. phone call his freshman year. A family friend told him that his father, who had recently taken his dream job as the president of American University of Beirut, had been assassinated while walking out of an elevator.

Islamic Jihad, a fundamentalist Shiite group that demanded the departure of Americans from Lebanon during the Lebanese Civil War, claimed responsibility. Later evidence suggested the killing was committed by a pair of Hezbollah gunmen, who were following Iranian orders.

The details don't matter. They don't make any difference in how Kerr feels.

"Anyone who has gone through something similar can tell you that there are no words to describe the devastation," Kerr said.

Two nights after he got the news, Kerr found sanctuary at Arizona's McKale Center, where dribbling and shooting a basketball in front of 14,500 people somehow provided a bit of healing. He broke down during the national anthem, but cleared his eyes in time to open the game with a 25-foot jumper. He scored 15 points that night in a 71-49 victory over rival Arizona State.

Just 18 at the time and 450 miles from any immediate family, Kerr said he never considered taking time off from school or missing games. Staying busy and being surrounded by his surrogate family in the locker room was his version of coping.

Truly ugly incident

But there was never a true escape when Kerr played games in the rival school's gymnasium. Hours before a game in Tempe, Ariz., during his senior season, Kerr endured one of the ugliest incidents in college basketball history. Arizona State fans started chanting, "Where's your dad?" and "P-L-O" (Palestine Liberation Organization).

Kerr began to shake and even teared up before taking a seat to gather himself. After stewing alone in the locker room for about 30 minutes, a steadied Kerr returned to the floor to make all six of his three-point attempts that night, leading his Arizona Wildcats to a 101-73 victory. He called the jeering fans the "scum of the earth."

His father's death created the bleakest days of Kerr's collegiate career, and made other adversities appear trivial. He was playing his usual way - diving on the court with reckless abandon and then immediately popping up as if he was on a trampoline - for the 1986 U.S. national team (the last group of amateurs to win a gold medal at a FIBA tournament) when he blew out his right knee.

He stayed down on the hardwood for what felt like hours to onlookers, and the injury was so bad that the doctor claimed Kerr had a better chance of returning to Arizona as the team's mascot than as the team's point guard. It cost Kerr the 1986-87 season at Arizona, but the NCAA extended his playing eligibility - giving him a chance to lead a dominant team as a fifth-year senior.

In 1987-88, Arizona went 35-3, beating opponents by an average of 20.5 points per game, holding the nation's top ranking for six weeks and advancing to the Final Four before losing 86-78 to Oklahoma. Kerr scored just six points on 15.4 percent shooting in his final collegiate game, far below his career averages of 11.2 and 54.8 percent.

"It's still the low point of my basketball career," Kerr said. "I felt like I let down my team. Does it still bother me?

"Every day."

Drafted by Phoenix Suns

Even after Kerr was selected by Phoenix with the 50th pick in the 1988 NBA Draft, he wasn't certain that he'd find a way to last in the league - having little more than a pristine shooting stroke to protect his non-guaranteed contract. Fifteen seasons later, including an NBA career-best 45.4 percent three-point shooting average, Kerr left little doubt.

In 1990, Kerr married his college sweetheart, Margot, who would later say, after replacing four of her husband's lost wedding rings: "Don't worry about wearing one, anymore. I trust you." They have three children: Nick, a basketball player at the University of San Diego; Maddy, a volleyball player at Cal; and Matthew, a high schooler in Southern California.

By the time of the wedding, Kerr had been traded to Cleveland, where he worked his way into regular playing time for Lenny Wilkens, who retired as the NBA's all-time winningest coach before being passed by Don Nelson. Kerr remade himself again to fit Phil Jackson's triangle offense in Chicago and won three championships, and then he did it again to fit Popovich's ball and player movement offense in San Antonio and win two more.

Kerr was a key part of the 1995-96 Bulls team that went 72-10, a single-season wins record that he believes could stand for an eternity. He remembers Jordan entering that season "like a man possessed," and Kerr felt the brunt right away.

The guards were matched up against each other in a training camp practice, filled with trash-talking and physically punishing fouls. Jordan got so frustrated that he punched Kerr, leaving him with a black eye.

"From that point on, I've always respected him. He didn't give in," Jordan says. "He may have gotten the worst of it, but I respected him 100 percent."

That scuffle may have set the tone for what would happen in the 1997 NBA Finals. In Game 6 with Chicago and Utah tied 86-86, Jordan, the game's ultimate closer, had enough trust to pass the ball to Kerr, who confidently made a three-pointer that clinched the Bulls' third straight championship.

That's not even Kerr's favorite professional memory. That honor goes to Game 6 of the 2003 Western Conference finals.

Kerr, who played 10 of the Spurs' 18 playoff games that season and averaged only 4.6 minutes per cameo, was called on when Dallas took a double-digit lead in the second half. He made four consecutive three-pointers to lead a comeback victory.

The flight home landed around at 2 o'clock the next morning, and Spurs signs and flags had been raised and posted all along Kerr's block. There were still remnants of a party in Kerr's front yard when he wearily arrived home with the game ball and content that he was on his way to retiring a champion.

First as a player, then during two stints as a TV analyst and also as a general manager of the Phoenix Suns, Kerr always had his eye on coaching. He got really serious about it two years ago, when Jeff Van Gundy, a former NBA coach and current television analyst, told him to start writing down his coaching plans and past influences.

For two years, Kerr jotted down every detail about his desire to hire an experienced staff of assistants with different specialties, and his plans for practices, travel and game execution. By the time the Warriors had a coaching vacancy in May and flew to interview Kerr in Oklahoma City, he had his notes neatly formatted into a PowerPoint presentation.

Deal was sealed

After the interview, Kerr went on to call the Western Conference finals game in Oklahoma City, and the Warriors' management flew back to the Bay Area with copies of Kerr's manifesto - further convincing them that he was the right guy for the job. Less than 24 hours later, the deal was sealed.

He probably is the smartest guy in most rooms, but Kerr doesn't feel the need to constantly prove it. He defers questions about the franchise's future to Lacob and Welts and questions about the team's roster to Myers and West. During summer-league practices, he graciously stepped out of the fore to let experienced assistants Alvin Gentry and Ron Adams make points.

But when Kerr spoke, it captivated the gym. Having played for some of the game's greatest coaches, Kerr said he regularly has flashbacks to things they said, and he's such a good communicator that he can immediately clarify the details for the current-day players.

"You just have to be yourself, but part of who you are is what you've learned from the great ones," Kerr said. "Pop and Phil couldn't be more different as human beings, but the similarities are their insistence on daily fundamental drill work. You have to find ways that are creative and that won't wear out your team. ... The NBA season is such a grind that there has to be some fun and some intrigue without compromising the importance of the lesson."

Steve Kerr always finds ways to make the lessons fascinating.