Warriors’ Nicholas Kerr is refreshingly honest about being a nepo baby

Nicholas Kerr, Santa Cruz Warriors coach and son of Golden State Warriors coach Steve Kerr, knows that his last name got him to where he is today.

“I would never have gotten into the NBA without a family connection,” Kerr said.

“I don’t blame anyone for saying I have privilege, they’re right,” he later added. “… I had not even a crack in the door, I had the door wide open for me.”

That doesn’t make hearing about it easier; the younger Kerr told the Mercury News that he recently deleted Twitter off his phone to block out the noise. (Seth Cooper, the Warriors’ director of player development and Kerr’s predecessor in Santa Cruz, did call him “the best candidate of everyone we talked to.”)

It’s rare that a nepo baby is as frank as Kerr about the advantages they started with. Actress Allison Williams stood out for her honesty in an interview earlier this year.

“All that people are looking for is an acknowledgement that it’s not a level playing field,” she told Vulture in January. “It’s just unfair. Period, end of the story, and no one’s really working that hard to make it fair. To not acknowledge that me getting started as an actress versus someone with zero connections isn’t the same — it’s ludicrous.”

Then there’s the flip side, like the perspective of former NFL coach Wade Phillips, son of legendary Houston Oilers head coach Bum Phillips.

“I just don’t see [nepotism]. I don’t see it,” Phillips, who hired his son Wes onto his staff in Dallas in 2007, told USA Today last November. “Because it’s just like the players. Whoever’s the best, plays. They’re all about winning, they’re not about who’s kin to who or whatever.”

At least Nicholas Kerr sees it.