PHOENIX \u2014 Brazilian basketball legend Oscar Schmidt passed away Friday at the age of 68, and the news hit one particular NBA coach very hard: Steve Kerr.<\/p>\n
The Golden State Warriors head coach has repeatedly praised Schmidt through the years for his talent and compassion, and that was the case again before Friday\u2019s Play-In game between the Warriors and Phoenix Suns. Kerr ended his pregame news conference by acknowledging Schmidt\u2019s passing, after being reminded of it while answering a question about another Brazilian player: young Warriors forward Gui Santos.<\/p>\n
\u201cI want to give my condolences to Oscar Schmidt\u2019s family,\u201d Kerr said. \u201c\u2026 He was one of the greatest shooters I\u2019ve ever seen in my life. Just no conscience, a little bit of the Steph Curry mentality. Never, ever thought twice about letting it fly. Just a beautiful player with an incredible mentality.\u201d<\/p>\n
Kerr mentioned a memory about Schmidt that has stuck with him for 40 years. It was when Kerr, as a member of Team USA, tore an ACL in the semifinals of the FIBA world championships in Madrid in 1986. Schmidt, the star of the Brazilian team playing against the Americans, helped pick Kerr up and carried him off the floor.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe literally picked me up, carried me off the floor,\u201d Kerr said. \u201cIt was an incredible gesture on his part, and over the next few years, he really exploded. Didn\u2019t he have like 48 against Team USA a few years later?\u201d<\/p>\n
It was actually 46 points against the Americans in the gold-medal game of the 1987 Pan American Games. He then had 31 against Team USA a year later at the Seoul Games, the last time the U.S. sent a team of college players to the Olympics.<\/p>\n
Schmidt was drafted by the New Jersey Nets in the sixth round of the 1984 NBA Draft, but the Brazilian never ended up signing with the team. Instead, the 6-foot-9 forward spent the entirety of his professional career hopping between teams in Europe and South America. He retired as the top scorer in the history of the Summer Olympics and the FIBA World Cup.<\/p>\n
\u201cI always admired him so much,\u201d Kerr said. \u201cI was so sad to hear about the news today. Only 68. The guy was absolutely beloved in Brazil, so to all our Brazilian fans, I want to say my condolences, and from the Warriors, we\u2019re feeling for you.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"PHOENIX \u2014 Brazilian basketball legend Oscar Schmidt passed away Friday at the age of 68, and the news…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":614727,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[557],"tags":[64,63,5552,590,85],"class_list":{"0":"post-614726","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-nba","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-golden-state-warriors","11":"tag-nba","12":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/614726","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=614726"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/614726\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/614727"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=614726"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=614726"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=614726"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}