In case you didn't know, North Korea leader Kim Jong-un is a massive Chicago Bulls fan. So big that he once even played basketball with current Golden State Warriors head coach and former Bulls player, Steve Kerr.
In 2012, when Barack Obama was in his first term as president, Jong-un had just taken over for his father, who passed away. The United States needed a way to approach relations with Jong-un. That's when Marcus Noland, one of Obama's advisors at the time, brought up Kerr as a potential ex-Bulls star to help America get Jong-un on their side.
No known American had yet to meet him since he assumed power, and there wasn’t much known about him. That led Noland, an economist who studied North Korea and Obama had summoned for advice, to suggest an outside-the-box idea based on one of the few pieces of concrete intel the country had: Kim was a Bulls fan.
“We have to work with what we’ve got,” Noland told Obama in that meeting. “If this guy is really as big of a Chicago Bulls fan as we hear, let’s work with that, because we have nothing else to go on.”
Long before his meeting with Obama, Noland went to college at Swarthmore College in Pennsylvania, where he crossed paths with Kerr’s older brother, John. He knew the Kerrs had grown up in Lebanon, where their late father, Malcolm, was president of the American University of Beirut. Kerr had lived in some of the more complicated parts of the world, which — along with his three titles with the Bulls— made him the perfect candidate for this unique diplomatic mission.
Noland suggested sending Kerr, then a TNT broadcaster, to Pyongyang, the capital of North Korea, to play basketball with Kim. He’d be joined by Syd Seiler and Danny Russel, two members of Obama’s National Security Council who also specialized in North Korean affairs. If Kim wanted to talk business, Kerr could step aside and let them handle it. If Kim wanted to shoot hoops with Kerr, at least American officials could get a feel for him and his people. Noland played into Obama’s basketball fandom and asked who else possessed both the political and schematic X’s and O’s.
Long story short, Obama was never that keen on the idea. Noland left the White House that day in 2012 and never heard about it again. Thankfully for Kerr, he never had to go play ball with the supposed Bulls superfan in Jong-un.
Funny enough, Kerr actually first learned of Noland's idea last week at MSG just hours before Stephen Curry broke the three-point record. The whole situation was laid out in a book by a former Washington Post correspondent.
While Kerr has never spoken to Obama about it, he said he plans to the next time they see each other. Boy, that will be an interesting conversation.
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