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Brian Windhorst, ESPN Senior Author
ABU DHABI, United Arab Emirates — Calling it a “horrible” and “demoralizing day for our nation,” Staff USA males’s basketball coach Steve Kerr tried to summarize the feelings of his staff Sunday within the wake of an assassination try on former President Donald Trump.
“It is a time the place we really feel very proud to symbolize our nation sporting USA on our chest, competing within the Olympics,” Kerr mentioned. “We have talked to the gamers about how vital it’s to indicate the very best model of us as human beings to symbolize our nation in a respectful, dignified method. It makes you wish to do this much more so, as a result of that is actually shameful for us to sit down right here and take into consideration what occurred and what is going on on in our nation.”
Kerr, whose father, Malcolm, was assassinated in 1984 in Beirut, Lebanon, has a protracted historical past of criticizing gun violence. Malcolm Kerr was focused by the militant group Islamic Jihad as a result of he served because the president of the American College of Beirut.
“It is such a demoralizing day for our nation, and it is one more instance of not solely our political division but additionally gun tradition,” Steve Kerr mentioned. “A 20-year-old with an AR-15 making an attempt to shoot the previous president. It is arduous to course of every thing, and it is scary to consider the place this goes due to the problems that exist already within the nation. So this can be a horrible day.
“Thank God Trump wasn’t hit, however it’s simply so demoralizing in each which manner.”
In a social media submit, Trump mentioned he was “shot with a bullet that pierced the higher a part of my proper ear” throughout a rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, on Saturday. Trump was shortly whisked from the stage by Secret Service brokers, his ear coated in blood. Early Sunday morning, the FBI identified the suspected gunman as 20-year-old Thomas Matthew Crooks.
Gamers and coaches realized of the information Sunday morning. In an announcement, the FBI mentioned “this stays an energetic and ongoing investigation.”
“It is clearly a really unhappy time normally,” Staff USA star Stephen Curry mentioned. “All of the conversations across the election and the state of politics in our nation, after which you could have a scenario like this, which simply [evokes] a number of feelings round issues that we have to appropriate as a individuals.
“Clearly, gun management at the start, as a result of the truth that that is even potential for someone to have an assault like that. However simply extra so that you wish to [see] positivity and hope. It sounds tacky, however it’s actual. That is when our nation’s at its greatest, and it simply provides one other blemish to what is going on on. So unhappy is simply the phrase.”
Martina Sturdy, the U.S. Ambassador to the United Arab Emirates, addressed the staff in a prescheduled occasion Sunday. Staff USA will stay within the Center East this week earlier than taking part in Olympic preparation video games towards Australia on Monday and Serbia on Wednesday.
“Clearly what we’re doing may be very trivial, simply taking part in basketball, however we wish to put our greatest selves on the market to attempt to give individuals a glimpse of what our nation might be about,” Kerr mentioned. “And then you definately hear one thing like this and it is simply so demoralizing and clearly so unhappy.”