Hansen's Hundred, No. 7: Smooth-shooting Steve Kerr helped put Wildcats on the map

A month after Steve Kerr played his last basketball game at Arizona, he returned the furniture from his apartment to Budget Furniture Rentals.

The owner of the furniture store asked Kerr if he would autograph the bed.

“What for?” asked Kerr.

“I want to put it up for auction and donate the money to charity.”

Kerr quickly agreed. He wrote “Sweet Dreams” and “Go Wildcats” on the 9-month-old mattress with a felt-tip pen. The man from the furniture store contacted the Tucson Toros and asked if he could auction the mattress and a Kerr-autographed UA basketball at a future game at Hi Corbett Field.

On May 26, 1988, Tucsonan Liz Ramos bought the mattress for $220. The money was transferred to the Tucson Children’s Home.

If the NCAA’s new Name, Image and Likeness movement — making college athletes eligible to earn money from product endorsements and appearances — had been in force decades ago, Steve Kerr would have made tens of thousands of dollars during his UA career, 1983-88.

As soon as he played in his final Arizona game, a 1988 Final Four loss to Oklahoma, Kerr agreed to endorse Budget Car Rentals. Display ads with a photo of Kerr appeared in newspapers for several months. Under Kerr’s name and image it said “Rent From Budget.”

Kerr, No. 7 on our list of Tucson’s Top 100 Sports Figures of the last 100 years, was so creative and so in demand that he hired former teammate Bruce Fraser — now one of Kerr’s assistant coaches with the Golden State Warriors — to essentially be his booking agent.

For much of April and May, 1988, Kerr made public appearances four or five times a week. He spoke to the student body at Rincon/University High School, at which more than 2,000 students chanted “STEVE KERRRRRR!” repeatedly.

One student told the Star that she took 48 photographs of Kerr. Another student held up a sign that said, “Would you marry me in 10 years?”

On most days, Fraser and Kerr went through about five to 20 letters addressed to the UA athletic department in care of Kerr. He answered all of them. He did not charge for his public appearances.

A Tucson stock brokerage firm was so impressed by Kerr that it donated money to establish The Kerr Scholarship at Arizona, honoring both Kerr and his late father, Malcolm.

It wasn’t like Kerr was killing time. He was part of the U.S. Olympic basketball team’s 1988 European Tour — he did not make the final cut — and was also preparing for the NBA draft. Yet he found time to remain engaged with his friends. He even played in a city league baseball game at Reid Park. (Kerr had been a standout baseball player at Palisades High School near UCLA and played in a prep playoff game at Dodger Stadium).

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During his UA basketball days as his popularity soared, Kerr did not make it an all-about-me excursion. He rode his bike to and from campus. In the spring, he often walked alone across the street from McKale Center to watch UA baseball workouts at Sancet Field, becoming friends with Wildcats coach Jerry Kindall.

“Steve reminded me of a Huck Finn, a Tom Sawyer kind of guy,” Kindall told the Star after Kerr helped the Chicago Bulls win three NBA championships. “He’s such a clean-cut, humble, friendly kind of guy. He always had a place in my heart because he was so upright. I’ve pulled for him ever since.”

Kerr left the UA in the summer of 1988 to play for the Phoenix Suns but made Tucson his summer home for the next 10 years. He married an Amphitheater High School grad, Margot Brennan, and bought a home in the Sam Hughes neighborhood.

The UA retired Kerr’s jersey No. 25 in January 1999, only the second jersey so honored, joining Sean Elliott’s No. 32. Instead of making it a tear-jerking, solemn ceremony, Kerr predictably went into his self-deprecatory mode, talking about how he struggled defensively and that he couldn’t “jump over the mid-court line.”

The sellout crowd roared. He had been gone for 11 years, but the McKale Center faithful had not forgotten the “STEVE KERRRRRR!” chant made famous by public address announcer Roger Sedlmayr.

There was no way Kerr, the too-small, too-slow former UCLA ballboy, could have ever seen this coming.

When Lute Olson recruited Kerr in the summer of 1983, he did not initially make it clear that Kerr had a scholarship offer. Until then, it looked like Kerr would play at Cal State Fullerton. Arizona was coming off a 4-24 season, and Olson had used the maximum allotment of recruiting visits.

After watching Kerr play in an organized pickup game at his high school, ever-busy preparing for his first Arizona season, Olson returned to Tucson. He wasn’t sure the Kerrs were willing to pay their way to Tucson. Kerr wasn’t sure Olson officially offered a scholarship.

Ultimately, after telling his father he wanted to play at Arizona, Kerr phoned the UA’s athletic department, left a message but did not get a return call. A few days later, Malcolm Kerr, president of American University of Beirut, Lebanon, phoned Olson. The two agreed Steve Kerr would get the last available scholarship on Arizona’s 1983-84 basketball team.

Six years later, Kerr was at the White House with his mother, Ann, as part of a meeting with vice president George H.W. Bush. At the end of the meeting, Bush introduced Steve and his mother to President Ronald Reagan.

“I understand you play basketball at Arizona State,” Reagan said.

“No, sir,” said Kerr. “It’s Arizona.”

It was Steve Kerr as much as anyone who put the Wildcats on the map.