Steve Kerr has spent decades building one of basketball’s most decorated résumés, and now it includes an Academy Award. The short documentary All the Empty Rooms, for which Kerr served as an executive producer, won the Oscar for Best Documentary Short at the 2026 Academy Awards. The film centers on families who have preserved the bedrooms of children lost to mass shootings, and Kerr’s connection to the project reflects a cause that has long been personal to him after his father was killed by gunmen in 1984.
Kerr was not involved in the film’s day-to-day production, but he helped champion its message through screenings, public advocacy and a Los Angeles Times opinion piece, using his platform to push the conversation toward action rather than symbolism alone.
“I think the more people who watch it, the more impact it will have. And that’s the main thing for me — what I want is for people to act,” Kerr said. “I want people to be proactive with this issue, to address it and understand it. My hope is that if people can address it and understand it a little bit, then they’ll be more willing to act on it.”
What makes the moment especially notable is that Kerr now joins a small group of NBA figures with Oscar-winning work attached to their names. Kobe Bryant won the 2018 Academy Award for Best Animated Short Film for Dear Basketball, while Stephen Curry and Shaquille O’Neal were executive producers on The Queen of Basketball, which won Best Documentary Short in 2022.
For Kerr, the award is less about Hollywood prestige than public impact. That has been clear in the way he has discussed the film. This is a coach whose public voice has often extended beyond the sideline, and this project gave him another way to engage an issue he has spoken about for years. The Oscar gives the film more visibility. Kerr’s hope, by his own telling, is that the visibility leads to something more meaningful than applause.
