Steve Kerr Cheers on Harris and Walz, a Fellow Coach

Steve Kerr, the coach of the Golden State Warriors, praised Vice President Kamala Harris onstage on Monday night and urged Americans to come together to reject former President Donald J. Trump as if they were one united basketball team.

“Think about what our team achieved with 12 Americans in Paris, putting aside rivalries to represent our country,” Mr. Kerr said at the Democratic convention in Chicago, referring to the Olympic gold medal he won this month as the coach for the U.S. team. “Now imagine what we could do with all 330 million of us playing on the same team.”

Mr. Kerr, one of the most outspoken liberal voices in American sports, employed the high-minded language that Bay Area sports fans have come to expect from him when he opines on pressing issues of the day, especially gun violence.

“Leadership, real leadership,” Mr. Kerr said, is “not the kind that seeks to divide us, but the kind that recognizes and celebrates our common purpose.”

But he also wove in plenty of sports references, speaking in an arena where he won three N.B.A. championships as a member of the Michael Jordan-led Chicago Bulls.

“Coach to coach, that guy’s awesome,” Mr. Kerr said of Gov. Tim Walz of Minnesota, Ms. Harris’s running mate and a former high school football coach. But, he joked, Mr. Walz’s defensive coaching left a little to be desired. “Way too much reliance on the blitz, in 1999, against Mankato East,” Mr. Kerr said.