Golden State Warriors coach Steve Kerr spoke out sharply against President Trump's immigration ban Sunday, calling it "shocking" and characterizing it as a path to even more terror attacks.

Though Kerr's words echoed the dismay and disgust of many against Trump's executive order signed Friday banning entry into the US of all people from seven Muslim-majority nations for at least 90 days, the former NBA player turned coach has a unique perspective on the issue: As written about extensively in a New York Times piece last month, Kerr's father was targeted by and assassinated by terrorists in 1984, while serving as the president of American University in Beirut.

“It’s really simple to demonize Muslims because of our anger over 9/11, but it’s obviously so much more complex than that,” Kerr told the Times in December. “The vast majority of Muslims are peace-loving people, just like the vast majority of Christians and Buddhists and Jews and any other religion. People are people.”

"As easy as it is to demonize people, there’s a lot of different factors involved in creating this culture that we’re in now.”

A year before his dad's slaying, Kerr was trapped in Beirut himself during the summer between high school and his first year at Arizona State.

“There was some question about whether flights would be going out because of everything that was happening,” Kerr said. “We were in the terminal, and all of a sudden there was a blast. It wasn’t in the terminal but on the runways. The whole place just froze. Everybody just froze. People started gathering, saying, ‘We’ve got to get the hell out of here.’ My mom grabbed me, and I remember running out of the terminal and through the parking lot. It was really scary. I remember thinking, ‘This is real.’”

The Kerrs pondered options for getting Steve out. They learned that a private plane of diplomats was going to the United States Marine base and there might be an available seat on the flight back out. Steve spent hours waiting, talking to Marines. In the end, there were no seats. The Kerrs eventually made arrangements for a university driver to take Steve over the mountains, through Syria to Jordan. (The driver, a longtime friend of the family, was killed by a sniper in Beirut in 1985.)

On an early morning in October 1983, a truck bomb destroyed the four-story Marine barracks. Among the dead were 220 Marines and 21 other service members.

“I remember looking at all the photos afterward,” Kerr said. He started to cry. “I see all these, the nicest people, who I met and they were showing us around the base and just trying to do their jobs and keep the peace. And a truck bomb?”

Kerr said he recognized some of the faces of the dead.

“There is a chaplain who had come over and kind of taken us under his wing,” he said. “The nicest guy. And I saw his face. ...”

Kerr wiped his eyes and took a deep breath. “What has it been, 30 years? And it still brings me to tears.”

It's clear that those long-ago experiences have shaped Kerr's perception to this day, as on Sunday night, following the Warriors' 113-111 victory over the Portland Trail Blazers, Kerr told assembled members of the press that "As someone whose family member was a victim of terrorism, having lost my father, if we're trying to combat terrorism by banishing people from coming to this country, by really going against the principals of what our country's about and creating fear, it's the wrong way to go about it."

"If anything, we could be breeding anger and terror," Kerr said. "I think it's shocking. I think it's a horrible idea. I feel for all the people who are affected. Families are being torn apart and I worry in the big picture what this means to the security of the world."

Needless to say, Kerr was immediately hit with vile responses via social media, none of which I will include here because people like that don't deserve additional attention. But, also, they are total sad amateur hour compared to what Kerr endured shortly after his dad's slaying at the hands of a group calling itself Islamic Holy War, when on the court playing for the University of Arizona he endured taunts of “P.L.O., P.L.O.,” “Your father’s history,” and “Why don’t you join the Marines and go back to Beirut?”

“When I heard it, I just dropped the ball and started shaking,” Kerr said of the experience.

“I sat down for a minute. I’ll admit they got to me. I had tears in my eyes. For one thing, it brought back memories of my dad. But, for another thing, it was just sad that people would do something like that.”

Kerr, who likely has a greater understanding of the Middle East than some current White House staffers, said in December that American policies have made a bad situation in the area worse.

“To use Colin Powell’s line, ‘If you break it, you own it,’ and now we own it,” Kerr said. “And it’s, like, ‘Oh, my God, wait, it’s so much more complicated than we thought.’ Everybody looks back and thinks we would have been way better off not going to war. That was really dumb. But history repeats itself all the time. We didn’t need to go into Vietnam, but circumstances, patriotism, anger, fear — all these things lead into war."

"It’s a history of the world," Kerr said. "It just so happens that now is probably the scariest time since I’ve been alive.”

See all of SFist's coverage on the immigration ban here.