Steve Kerr has had plenty to smile about throughout his NBA career, having won three league championships playing alongside Michael Jordan with the Chicago Bulls and two more titles with Tim Duncan and the San Antonio Spurs.

Now, in his first year as an NBA coach, Kerr has led the Golden State Warriors to a 67-win season – the 10th best regular season in league history – guiding them to a spot in the NBA Finals.

But way before all that joy and success, came unfathomed sorrow — a heartbreaking event that's coming back to light in the media machine's storylines leading up to the Finals.

When Kerr was 18 years old and playing for the University of Arizona, his life would forever change on January 18, 1984. That's when he received a phone call at 3 a.m. that his dad Malcolm Kerr, a professor specializing in Middle East studies and president of the American University of Beirut, was assassinated by extremists in Beirut. He died at the age of 52. Steve was crushed.

Recently sitting down with ESPN's Hannah Storm, Kerr tried to explain that kind of sorrow, using basketball as a safety net and saving grace to get through the trying time.

"That was obviously a really hard time in my life, but to be part of a team when you're going through adversity, to be able to rely on your teammates and coaches to be able to come in every day and be part of that family... that's what it's about," Kerr said. "That's what we're trying to create here [in Golden State]."

Malcolm Kerr moved his family from Lebanon, where Steve was born, to the United States during World War II.

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