Who was coach Steve Kerr speaking to?

Steve Kerr is a brilliant public speaker. The most memorable words ever uttered at a championship sports team’s parade came from Kerr in 1997, when he explained that his game-winning shot in the NBA Finals was a result of Michael Jordan not being comfortable in important moments and knowing he had to get the ball to a more confident shooter. After a double-covered Jordan passed the ball to him in the final seconds of the game, Kerr hit the game-winning shot from mid-range. “So I thought, Well, I guess I have to get Michael out of trouble again.“ Kerr said to the chuckling crowd.

This week, Democrats wanted Steve Kerr. Why wouldn’t they? Less than two weeks after coaching the United States to a gold medal at the Paris Olympics, his words carry a pleasant whiff of unifying patriotism. His four championships with the Golden State Warriors have made him the most accomplished NBA coach of his generation, and he proudly sits somewhere to the left of center. During Donald Trump’s presidency, Kerr was one of a handful of basketball coaches — along with Gregg Popovich of the San Antonio Spurs and NBA veteran Stan Van Gundy — who became widely heard voices of moderate Democratic resistance to Trump.

While Popovich called Trump a “heartless coward,” Kerr had the pleasure of leading the first championship team to publicly skip a White House visit during the Trump administration. Trump later criticized Kerr by name while attacking the NBA for its capitalist pursuits in China. All of this has made Kerr one of the most compelling anti-Trump figures in the Democratic pop culture arena. The son of a murdered American scientist, Kerr is also an eloquent gun control advocate.

Kerr was back in Chicago Monday night, speaking on behalf of the Democrats in the same arena where he once won a title-clinching game for the Bulls. The same “winning spirit” from those Bulls days was in the air Monday, Kerr said, and if you didn’t get it, all you had to do was Google “Michael Jordan.” Kerr was funny and engaging, and not even close to the strangest celebrity speaker at a political convention in recent memory (or, given the recent Republican convention, in recent weeks).

Still, it was reasonable to wonder what the deal was, since it was related to Kamala Harris’ bid for president. As political commentator Tim Miller said around the time Kerr was on stage, “I don’t see how this helps Kamala defeat Donald Trump. That’s fine. That’s fine! It’s not harmful. It’s just fan service for political obsessives.” Indeed, that was pretty much all it was. Political conventions are long, dirty affairs, and there aren’t enough major politicians to fill four nights of network airtime.

But Kerr was a bit different from the other speakers that night: Joe and Jill Biden, Hillary Clinton, a handful of members of Congress, union leaders and promising lawmakers from key states. Who were Democrats trying to capture by inviting him on stage? Was it necessary have the Warriors coach and the former Bulls shooting guard goofing around on the biggest night of the event? Well, yes.

The NBA teams Kerr has been associated with make him a perfect fit for this moment in Democratic politics. Sure, it’s a nice touch and a bit of homegrown fan appreciation that Kerr is returning to the building where he shot 3-pointers 48 percent in five seasons. But he’s more of a Golden State Warrior now than he ever was the Chicago Bulls, which makes him a useful tool for Harris. One of the biggest intraparty divisions the vice president needs to resolve is between wealthy tech donors who dislike regulation and antitrust hawks who think business titans have been allowed to run wild. At the same time, some of Harris’s big Silicon Valley financiers want her to fire Federal Trade Commission chief Lina Khan, who has doggedly pursued antitrust actions against tech giants like Google, Meta and Amazon.

One way Harris could reassure these donors would be to signal that she would strip Khan of power in her administration. But did you know other way to placate these oddball donors? Remind them that most of them are Warriors fans who probably started watching basketball around the time Kerr and Steph Curry turned Golden State into a dynasty. (Kerr closes his speech with the hope that Democrats will seize on Curry’s “night-in” celebration of Donald Trump in November, which could have been the final blow to this crowd.) Harris wants money and cooperation from wealthy Bay Area types. Getting Kerr out for a good speech isn’t as valuable as pledging not to enforce any federal mergers and acquisitions laws, but every little bit helps.

For reasons I can’t explain but that may have something to do with his youth in Lebanon, Kerr also has credibility with a certain type of foreign policy intellectual that could be useful to Harris’ campaign. During the Obama administration, one of the president’s advisers pitched the idea that Kerr could help achieve détente with North Korea by playing a game with Kim Jong Un. Harris is still trying to carve out a foreign policy voice for himself, since he didn’t have much of a public voice as vice president. There’s a nonzero chance that a member of the Blob, the D.C. foreign affairs establishment, would now be more willing to write a policy brief for Harris because he has Kerr’s clear support. What a joy.

Republicans have hijacked the American flag in our national divorce, but Kerr, at this point, is a good candidate to flip it left. NBA fans are generally a bit more liberal than fans of other major sports leagues, and it’s hard to fathom that many people who care about what Kerr has to say aren’t already on his side. But in the immediate aftermath of leading Team USA to Olympic glory, Kerr is invoking funny notions of patriotism. He began his speech by talking about American basketball teams as a reflection of the country, and hey, sure, that might resonate with a few people. The only members of the Democratic Party who argued with him were members of the Massachusetts delegation, who were mildly disappointed that Boston Celtics star Jayson Tatum didn’t get much playing time in Paris.

For all of these reasons, Kerr is a good backup player for the Democratic outreach effort. He would be a useful recruit for his own campaign, something the blogger can write about without fear of repercussions, because Kerr — unlike, say, Nick Saban in Alabama — would be running on friendly political turf in the Bay Area or Illinois. (He he did play in college at the University of Arizona and was drafted by the Phoenix Suns if Really wanted to try in a swing state…) Political history may not record his speech as a memorable moment in Harris’ quest for the White House. But it was a more helpful allocation of a few minutes than you might think. It also gave Democrats a chance to play the same intro music the Bulls got in the ’90s when the announcer read out their starting lineup. It’s a better ’90s nostalgia hit than Democrats usually court.