EXCLUSIVE: When 19 grade schoolers and two adults were killed in a mass shooting at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas in May 2022, some responded by offering thoughts and prayers. Golden State Warriors head coach Steve Kerr joined those demanding more – concrete action.
“We have children murdered at school,” he said emotionally at an NBA Conference Finals press conference usually reserved for talking basketball. “When are we going to do something!”
The nation may have largely turned its eyes away since then, but Kerr hasn’t. He’s continued to be outspoken on the issue of gun violence and in that spirit signed on as an executive producer of the Netflix film All the Empty Rooms, which has earned an Oscar nomination for Best Documentary Short. The film directed by Joshua Seftel takes us into the rooms of children killed in school shootings across the country, rooms preserved by their parents just as the kids left them on their final day off to school.
“It’s beautiful. It’s heartbreaking. It’s moving,” Kerr tells Deadline. “And I think the reason it’s so important is that it cuts through all the political BS that we are all living through. And it cuts right to the core of the issue, which is loss and grief.”
Head coach Steve Kerr of the Golden State Warriors on January 17, 2026 in San Francisco.
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Loss and grief are something Kerr knows from personal experience. In 1984, his father – who was serving as president of American University in Beirut – was shot to death by two gunmen on the campus.
“We lost my father to gun violence 42 years ago. So, this has been an issue that is very important to us,” he shares. “I would say maybe 10 years ago when I was really just getting started coaching the Warriors, I realized I had a platform and I wanted to use it for something positive. And this has kind of become my issue is gun violence prevention. And so to be approached about being an executive producer on the movie was incredibly flattering.”
In All the Empty Rooms, Seftel takes a deliberately non-politicized approach to the storytelling.
The room of Dominic Blackwell, killed November 14, 2019, at Saugus High School in Santa Clarita, CA.
Netflix
“It’s a film about gun violence that never says the word ‘gun,’” the director noted at a recent Q&A in Los Angeles. “It was a process to get there. Initially, we thought we have to acknowledge the debate, the political debate. And we even had a sequence where you could hear people debating the different sides and if there are sides in this — which I don’t think there really are. And then over time, as the film started to take shape and come together, we realized that we didn’t need that. I didn’t want there to be anything in this film that would give a person a reason to turn it off. And we just felt like there is no debate around this. Everyone agrees that you send your kid to school, they should be safe. And that’s simple. There’s no argument. Everyone agrees with that. And if we can just get back to that idea and remember that these are real lives and they’re real people, they’re not statistics, it’s not just a headline, but there’s an empty bedroom.”
In his activism, Kerr often emphasizes gun measures with broad support.
“There are things that we can do in terms of common-sense laws that should resonate with people on both sides of this issue,” he says. “If you’re a gun owner and you care about the safety of your children, which obviously everyone does – gun owner or not – then you should be thinking about safe storage. But you should also be thinking about registration, gun safety training when people start to use guns. These are all things that we know have been proven to reduce gun violence. And so, I think the importance of the film is that we can show people out there that it doesn’t have to be a political issue as much as it has to be a human issue that should reach both sides of the aisle as we try to make our country safer for our children.”
Head coach Steve Kerr and point guard Steph Curry of the Golden State Warriors during the second round of the 2025 NBA Playoffs on May 6, 2025 in Minneapolis, MN.
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Kerr’s star player on the Warriors, Steph Curry, has become involved in documentaries – executive-producing the Oscar-winning short The Queen of Basketball, directed by Ben Proudfoot. At Sundance in late January, he and Proudfoot won the top award for short documentary for a film they co-directed, The Baddest Speechwriter of All, about former MLK Jr. speechwriter Clarence B. Jones.
“[Jones] came and spoke to our team years ago,” Kerr recalls. “He’s from San Francisco and we invited him to come speak to the group and that was the impetus behind Steph’s idea to do the documentary.”
In contrast to the NFL and other professional sports leagues, head coaches in the NBA have something of a tradition of speaking out on social issues. Doc Rivers of the Milwaukee Bucks recently condemned the ICE fatal shooting of Renee Good in Minneapolis as “a straight up murder.” Former San Antonio Spurs head coach Greg Popovich spoke regularly and eloquently on matters of racial justice.
“The NBA has been very progressive in that way. Greg Popovich really inspired, I think, a lot of us to feel courageous enough to speak out,” Kerr says. “And we have great support from our commissioner, Adam Silver. I just think leagues are entities that have identities and cultures, just like other businesses. And I think the NBA has values that very much align towards some of the things that Coach Popovich brings up or that I bring up. A lot of our players are really outspoken, LeBron James and Steph Curry among them. And so, it feels good to have the support of the league behind us.”
Netflix
In the case of All the Empty Rooms, Joshua Seftel has the support of Coach Kerr behind him.
“What I’m doing is encouraging people I know to watch it, and I’m really hoping that it attracts a wide audience,” Kerr says of the documentary. “It’s on Netflix. It’s 34 minutes. It’s beautifully done. It’s moving, but well worth the watch as a way to think about this issue in a different way.”