International experiences broadened lives of coaches Steve Kerr, Tommy Lloyd

His mother and father met only because she made a college study abroad journey to Beirut, Lebanon, in the early 1950s, where Steve’s father, Malcolm, was then a graduate student.

Steve came along about 15 years later.

“One of the reasons I support foreign exchange is because it’s literally why I’m here right now,” Kerr said, drawing chuckles during a Tucson Humanities Festival event Friday, when he shared the stage at what was Bear Down Gym with UA men’s basketball coach Tommy Lloyd and UA Humanities Dean Alain-Philippe Durand.

But there was much more to it than that. Both coaches cited a lifetime of eye-opening experiences around the world, with basketball-related travel adding to the richness.

Both Kerr and Lloyd grew up shaped by international culture in different ways: Lloyd learning from the foreign exchange students that his family housed in their small-town Washington home, while Kerr bounced between California and the Middle East as Malcolm’s career progressed.

Kerr said the most significant impact came over three years in Cairo, Egypt, where he played basketball on an asphalt court as a ninth and 10th grader at the Cairo American School, while playing road games at venues that were worse than an actual road.

“Many of the courts were dirt and some of them were clay because they would transform the clay tennis court into a basketball court,” Kerr said. “Try playing basketball in clay. That's a problem.”

But Kerr’s feet moved, somehow. And his eyes opened.

“Living in Cairo, experiencing the culture, speaking Arabic, going into restaurants, taking a taxi and speaking with people — that's what changed my worldview,” Kerr said. “To go from the comfort of Pacific Palisades (Calif.) — my dad was a professor at UCLA — and to see millions of people living so differently, many of them really struggling, many of them doing well and loving their lives and seeing this huge culture that existed.

“It’s one of the most incredible cultures of all time — that country and the history — and that changed my life forever.”

Hearing those words, Lloyd smiled when he told the audience he didn’t have an experience “that transformative” to share, but two major world trips impacted Lloyd, his wife and, eventually, his children.

First, Lloyd and his wife, Chanelle, took a trip around the world as newlyweds, taking the small salary Lloyd earned as a self-described “low-level overseas player” and backpacking through Europe, Egypt, Zimbabwe, Mauritius, Australia, New Zealand and Hawaii.

“What an awesome way to start your marriage,” Lloyd said. “We had no money. I mean, it was an orange and a beer for lunch, and a hero for dinner.”

About a decade ago, long after Lloyd began parlaying his passion into an international recruiting niche at Gonzaga — where Zags coach Mark Few once chided Lloyd about charging $2,500 to an international phone card — Tommy and Chanelle again went around the world, this time with their kids.

They started by noticing the wealth (and oppressive August heat) of Dubai, finished with Australia and Fiji, and found perspective in between.

“We went to this really remote place in Indonesia where you stayed in one of these huts in the water and it was really hard travel to get there,” Lloyd said. “You're seeing washed-out roads and all, but the people were really happy. I was like, ‘Wow, that's powerful.’ These people have nothing, and they're really, really, really happy. Like, maybe we don't have it all right.

“That to me has always stood out.”

Over the course of a nearly hour-long conversation, of course, the topic turned to basketball, but mostly in how the game also helped expose them to the world. Both Kerr and Lloyd have coached USA Basketball teams internationally — Kerr with recent senior teams and Lloyd with U18 and U19 crews the previous two summers — and the two coaches also crossed paths in Abu Dhabi in 2023.

That year, Kerr was leading USA on an exhibition tour to prepare for the FIBA World Cup while Lloyd was leading the Wildcats on an exhibition trip in which they played teams from Israel, the UAE and Lebanon. Kerr even watched in person as the Wildcats beat the Lebanese national team.

Those trips have their advantages.

 “The players don't really have enough time to build up animosity towards the coach,” said Kerr, smiling, referring to a similar pre-Olympic tour in 2024.

Of course, Kerr and Lloyd spend most of their years with one squad, and that has usually worked out pretty well for them both. Kerr has led the Warriors to four NBA titles while Lloyd set a record for most wins in the first five years of a college head coaching career en route to leading UA to the Final Four last season.

Before every season, Lloyd said he aims to build culture into his roster, noting that he planned a deep talk about it for Saturday, before the Wildcats officially begin full-length preseason practices on Monday. 

The team building gets even better doing so when international players are mixed into the roster, Lloyd indicated. Six of the Wildcats’ current 13 scholarship players are from outside the United States.

“I think there's always a strength in diversity, and I love having half our team American, half our team international, and just watching the interactions,” Lloyd said.

“It’s so interesting to see. Like, I never would have had that guy and that guy becoming best friends. I think it adds so much more to the to the locker room when people have different experiences, and we can talk about them.”

With Kerr having donated $1 million to establish a Kerr Family Endowment for Humanities Abroad last year — and Lloyd announcing Friday his family would chip in another $25,000 — maybe now more UA Humanities students on study abroad scholarships can make a similar cultural connection.

One that could not only change their careers, but also their lives.

“I look at my life now from a distance,” said Kerr, now 60. “I know that the number of experiences I had just fed into everything, filled up my cup, filled up my brain. Going abroad, going overseas, and meeting different people and maybe speaking a different language. ... You start to get some new connections in your brain and it completely changes your view on things.

“I don't think you have to say ‘This is what I want to do with my life, so I better not go overseas because I better take that class.’ I don't think life works that way in all in all cases anymore.”