Why Steve Kerr can’t escape Wichita State basketball talk around the Warriors
Steve Kerr has won nine NBA championships, coached one of basketball’s modern dynasties and spent years navigating the daily pressure that comes with leading the Golden State Warriors.
But on Wednesday night in Memphis, Kerr sounded like a man at his breaking point.
“If I have to hear one more word about Gene Smithson and Aubrey Sherrod and Cliff Levingston…” Kerr said with a smirk. “Raymond is as passionate about Wichita State as anybody.”
That line, delivered with perfect deadpan, was less a complaint and more a badge of honor for Warriors senior vice president of communications Raymond Ridder, widely regarded as the NBA’s top public relations executives and one of Wichita State’s most relentless ambassadors.
So relentless, in fact, that the Shockers have become a recurring topic inside one of the league’s highest-profile organizations.
Kerr and Ridder’s relationship is playful with teasing flowing both ways. Before the Warriors’ game against the Grizzlies on Wednesday, Ridder slid his phone on the podium when Kerr was talking. The coach picked it up, a screenshot of Wichita State’s 65-55 win over Arizona, Kerr’s alma mater, in the 2016 NCAA Tournament.
“My job is to help the team win and this is an example of Raymond’s passion for Wichita State,” Kerr said in his pregame availability. “He would rather taunt me with a score from 10 years ago than help me prepare for an important Warriors game tonight.”
Ridder’s connection to WSU runs deep, back to childhood memories and some of the most beloved eras in program history. One of his earliest sports memories was watching the 1975-76 Shockers, a team that featured Calvin Bruton, Robert Gray, Robert Elmore, Cheese Johnson and Bob Trogele and won the Missouri Valley title and lost by one point to a Michigan team that went on to play for the national title.
He split his time between Kansas and California growing up, but attended elementary school for five years in Wichita and Goddard, then returned from California to attend Wichita Northwest High as a sophomore and junior. By then, he was already all-in on Shocker basketball.
Ridder recalls being a season ticket holder with his family at Levitt Arena in the early 1980s, watching teams featuring Antoine Carr, Xavier McDaniel, Cliff Levingston, Aubrey Sherrod and Greg Dreiling. For a basketball junkie, it was the perfect time and place to fall in love with the sport.
That fandom has led Ridder to building one of the most accomplished communications careers in the NBA. He has been with the Warriors’ public relations department since the 1998-99 season and rose to become senior vice president of communications during Golden State’s dynastic run that included six NBA Finals appearances from 2015-22 and four NBA championships.
Under Ridder, the Warriors’ communications staff has won the Brian McIntyre Media Relations Award a record eight times in the award’s 17-year history.
It’s not a low-stress job, managing media responsibilities for a franchise as scrutinized as the Warriors with stars like Kerr, Stephen Curry, Draymond Green, not to mention Kevin Durant and Klay Thompson in the recent past. That’s why talking Shocker hoops has become his release valve.
“I just love the banter back-and-forth with the guys,” Ridder said. “Whether it’s coach Kerr or Steph or Draymond or back when Andre Iguodala was with us. The NBA season is long and we’re together for a long time, especially during those Finals runs, we were playing nine months out of the year, so you’ve got to have fun and enjoy it every night. We try to lighten it up and bring some humor to the job. For me, talking about the Shockers and how they’re doing is that kind of reprieve for me.”
After a back-to-back road trip that saw the Warriors play in New Orleans on Tuesday and Memphis on Wednesday, Ridder was looking forward to returning home on Thursday — in time to watch the Shockers play at Memphis on ESPN2.
If the Warriors have an off day, he’s glued to the television. If the Warriors are playing, then Ridder has the ESPN app open on his phone, checking the score and ready to update anyone within earshot when the Shockers are rolling.
One of Ridder’s proudest moments came during WSU’s historic 35-1 season, when he spent so much time bragging to Curry about the Shockers that the topic slipped into Curry’s own postgame media session.
“Only one team never loses and that’s Wichita State,” Curry quipped.
Ridder beamed.
Now, Ridder has fresh material again. He’s been closely monitoring WSU’s late-season surge that has seen the Shockers win eight of their last 10 games, climbing to second place in the American Conference standings. Just as importantly, he’s noticed the attendance numbers beginning to climb.
“What’s exciting is now it looks like the fans are starting to come back, slowly but surely,” Ridder said. “We have some momentum now. I think people realize when that program is rolling, it’s one of the best atmospheres in college basketball.”
So when Kerr walked into the postgame press conference after the Warriors’ 133-112 win over the Grizzlies and thanked the two Warriors beat writers who made the trip, Ridder was quick to point out one more media member in the room: a reporter from Wichita.
Drawing on his years of Shocker basketball history lessons from Ridder, Kerr didn’t miss a beat.
“Is he going to ask a Greg Dreiling question? Cheese Johnson?”
This story was originally published February 26, 2026 at 4:55 PM.
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