Steve Kerr's Lookalike Is Back: Steve Gillis Stops the Warriors Coach Cold in Las Vegas

Steve Kerr has spent 12 years reading NBA games for a living, and on Tuesday night in Las Vegas the thing that stopped him mid-adjustment was his own face, sitting a few rows behind his bench with a beer. The Warriors were playing the Lakers in a preseason game at T-Mobile Arena when Steve Gillis took his seat, and Kerr turned, saw him, and simply stared, USA Today reports. The stare lasted about five seconds. It was long enough for a fan to film it, and the film was enough to carry a preseason Tuesday further than most regular-season games travel.

What actually happened in Las Vegas?

Kerr froze, Gillis looked back, and nothing else needed to occur. USA Today reports Kerr was getting ready to make a coaching adjustment when he noticed the lookalike entering and taking his seat, and that the only thing he could do in the moment was stare piercingly, in amazement. The New York Post adds the geography that made the moment unavoidable: Gillis was finding his seat a few rows behind the Warriors bench, close enough that Kerr was not looking at a screen or a distant crowd shot. He was looking at a man with his silver hair, his build and, as it happens, his first name, settling in to watch him work.

The clip’s route was ordinary and quick once it started. Polymarket Hoops posted the video on X, Hoop Central shared it on October 17, and by the end of that day USA Today, the Post, NBC Sports Bay Area and ClutchPoints had all published accounts identifying Gillis, ClutchPoints records. The game had been played on October 13. The reaction had a four-day fuse and a five-second payload.

Who is Steve Gillis?

A Las Vegas volleyball coach who teaches English, which is why a Warriors preseason trip to his city keeps producing this fixture. NBC Sports Bay Area, citing the Las Vegas Review-Journal’s March 2024 identification, reports Gillis teaches at Bishop Gorman High School and is the co-founder and director of Summerlin Volleyball Academy. He is, in other words, a coach himself, in a different sport, who happens to share a face with the most recognisable sideline figure in the NBA. The two men are not related, USA Today notes. They share a first name, facial features and an age group, and until the cameras found Gillis, that was where the overlap ended.

His home-court advantage is real. The 2024 appearance happened in San Francisco, on Kerr’s floor. This one happened in Las Vegas, on Gillis’s, during the same preseason trip on which rookie Yaxel Lendeborg was spooked by a defensive assignment that never happened. Golden State’s October has been a run of sideline stories, from Lendeborg’s candour to the still-unanswered question of where Kristaps Porzingis is, and the lookalike slotting into that week is partly luck. The stare is not. Kerr’s reaction is the content, and it only exists because Gillis sat where the coach could not avoid him.

Why did the clip travel when the resemblance is two years old?

Because in 2024 the cameras found Gillis, and in 2026 Kerr did. The first version of this story was a crowd shot: a man in the seats who looked like the coach, funny for a day, with Kerr’s verdict delivered later at a practice. This version has the one ingredient the first lacked, the subject’s own double take, captured live, with the game going on around it. A resemblance is a photograph. A four-time championship coach stopping work to process it is a clip, and clips are the currency a preseason week trades in. Golden State’s other preseason viral moment, Draymond Green’s sideline warning to a young opponent about plotting against team-mates, worked the same way: a few seconds of a famous face doing something unscripted.

There is also the plain strangeness of the depth of the match. Plenty of fans resemble players at a distance. Gillis survives the close-up, the same squint and jawline at courtside range, which is why the Post’s collected fan reactions ran to people wondering why Kerr was carrying a beer to a floor seat, and whether the timeline survives the two Steves seeing each other. Kerr has managed Golden State for more than 12 years and led them to four championships, the Post notes. None of that authority was any use to him for five seconds on Tuesday.

What happened the first time, in 2024?

Gillis went viral at a Warriors home game against the San Antonio Spurs in San Francisco in March 2024, when the television cameras picked him out of the Chase Center crowd, NBC Sports Bay Area reports. Kerr acknowledged him during that game. Gillis told Fox Sports the two had eyes quickly and Kerr gave him a fist pump, adding that it was nice of Kerr to be that gracious and that he had not expected anything, the Post reports. Kerr’s own review came at a Warriors practice afterwards. According to FOX Sports, he said he just thought Gillis was strikingly handsome, USA Today reports. It remains the correct joke, and the one every retelling of this story, including this week’s, ends up quoting.

The 2024 game also produced the story’s strangest supporting detail, and it involves a man who knows something about being recognised in a crowd.

What did Roger Federer have to do with it?

He took three selfies with the wrong Steve, or possibly the right one. Federer happened to be at the 2024 Spurs game, approached Gillis, and snapped selfies with him, the New York Post reports. Gillis’s account, given to Fox Sports, is that Federer took three selfies, patted him on the shoulder, said thanks, and was so gracious about it that Gillis was left wondering whether Federer knew he was not Steve Kerr. There is no suggestion Federer has ever clarified the point. It gives the Las Vegas sequel its missing context, though: Kerr is not the first sporting figure of the decade to be stopped by this face. He is the first to be filmed stopping himself.

What happened in the game itself?

Golden State won, from a long way back, and the scorers’ list explains why nobody led with it. The Warriors rallied from a 20-point second-half deficit to beat the Lakers 101-89, ClutchPoints reports, with Brandin Podziemski and Lendeborg scoring 17 points each, Lendeborg adding five rebounds, four assists and two steals in 26 minutes, and Stephen Curry scoring 11 in 23 minutes. It was a good preseason comeback in a game that does not count, played by a team whose week has been defined by everything except results, including a flopping technical on Jalen Brunson in New York that split the same new-emphasis debate a few days earlier across the league’s preseason. The Warriors open the regular season against the Lakers again on October 21 in Los Angeles. Gillis has four days to decide whether to complete the trilogy, and Kerr, one assumes, will try to keep his eyes on the court.