Steve Kerr almost found himself in North Korea playing basketball against Kim Jong-un.
According to BroBible, The Athletic published a piece Monday about a 2012 plan to send the Golden State Warriors coach to North Korea in an attempt to break the ice with the dictator. (RELATED: David Hookstead Is The True King In The North When It Comes To College Football)
It’s a well-known fact that Kim Jong-un, like his father Kim Jong-il before him, is obsessed with basketball and the Chicago Bulls.
Kerr played point guard on multiple Bulls championship teams.
In an alternate universe, Steve Kerr could have met Kim Jong-un for a game of H-O-R-S-E.@Alex__Schiffer details the Xs & Os of an economist’s plan for an unconventional meeting between North Korea and the U.S., pitched to President @BarackObama in 2012: https://t.co/LUYBkYvzjC pic.twitter.com/sD8bQWqFiF
— The Athletic (@TheAthletic) December 20, 2021
“We have to work with what we’ve got. If this guy is really as big of a Chicago Bulls fan as we hear, let’s work with that, because we have nothing else to go on,” advisor Marcu Noland told President Barack Obama at the time about potentially sending Kerr, who was a TNT analyst in 2012, according to The Athletic.
The plan was to send Kerr with two advisors to Pyongyang to play some hoops with the young dictator so they could get a better read of the situation in North Korea, but the plan never happened.
In an unrelated situation, Bulls legend Scottie Pippen did go over to North Korea on multiple occasions and is a good friend with the brutal tyrant.
An advisor to President Obama once proposed a radical plan to jumpstart diplomatic relations with North Korea: send Steve Kerr to Pyongyang to play a game of H-O-R-S-E with new Supreme Leader, and lifelong Bulls fan, Kim Jong-un.
Today’s story: https://t.co/J9cf6tVlH4
— Alex Schiffer (@Alex__Schiffer) December 20, 2021
As scary as people might think it is to visit North Korea, if you’re going as a former NBA star and at the time an analyst, the North Koreans wouldn’t dare touch you.
Add in the fact the man running the country loves the Bulls, and Kerr would have been treated like royalty, which is probably why the plan was pitched in the first place.
If I was offered the chance to go to North Korea as a representative of the USA, I would do it in a heartbeat. Think about how few Americans go to the closed off communist dictatorship and think of how fewer have ever met Kim Jong-un.
The list of Americans who have met the mysterious and brutal leader is very small.
We’ll never know what could have been, but at least we always have Kim Jong-un’s friendship with Dennis Rodman to fall back on!