play1:09Nash: Soccer background helped my NBA careerFormer NBA MVP and Mallorca co-owner Steve Nash believes that growing up playing soccer gave him an advantage as a basketball player.
play1:26Kerr: Criticism hard to avoid for modern athletesGolden State Warriors coach and Mallorca co-owner Steve Kerr thinks that basketball and soccer players in the social media age are under much more pressure than when he played in the NBA.
Kerr sees similarities in basketball plays and soccer tactics (0:52)Golden State Warriors coach and Mallorca co-owner Steve Kerr recognises soccer players passing the ball in small triangles as a tactic also used on the basketball court. (0:52)
Nash: Soccer background helped my NBA careerFormer NBA MVP and Mallorca co-owner Steve Nash believes that growing up playing soccer gave him an advantage as a basketball player.
Former NBA MVP and Mallorca co-owner Steve Nash believes that growing up playing soccer gave him an advantage as a basketball player.
Kerr: Criticism hard to avoid for modern athletesGolden State Warriors coach and Mallorca co-owner Steve Kerr thinks that basketball and soccer players in the social media age are under much more pressure than when he played in the NBA.
Golden State Warriors coach and Mallorca co-owner Steve Kerr thinks that basketball and soccer players in the social media age are under much more pressure than when he played in the NBA.
The man with the proposal, sitting smiling alongside Kerr as the rising sun reflects on Camelback Mountain, was Andy Kohlberg. The team the New York-born former tennis player — once a Wimbledon semifinalist, no less — wanted Kerr to join was RCD Mallorca. From a Spanish island 6,000 miles away, Mallorca play soccer, not basketball.
It could be the start of a joke — a tennis player, a basketball player and a footballer walk into Mallorca — but it was serious. Deliberate, too. Sport was the key, what brought the ownership group together and bound them, the “connective tissue” in Nash’s phrase. Which sport didn’t matter, although it begins with basketball and ends in football, the two sports — accessible, universal — that Kohlberg was convinced would grow most.
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“Back then, you could pick any club and think: ‘There’s a good chance we can improve this’,” Kohlberg says, “and Mallorca was a unique opportunity, because of the island as well as the club.” With a population of 1 million and 16 million annual visitors, nowhere offered the same scope for development.
It has been some ride, through two relegations and three promotions, from the second tier to the third and now in their fifth season back in LaLiga (finishing 16th, 9th, 15th and 10th so far). There was even a historic run to the Copa del Rey final in 2024 where, despite defeat and heartbreak, there was pride.
Now here they are — Kohlberg, Nash, Holden and Kerr — back in Arizona where it all began. Talking tennis, basketball, football. Life, in other words.
“I remember Steve Nash calling. ‘I’ve been offered part of a group buying a European football team: Are you interested?'” Holden says. “How often do you get a call like that? It was an instant yes.
“And why Mallorca? Have you been to Mallorca?! At the cup final, Steve said: ‘Can you remember where we were? We would never have dreamed of this when we were chasing footballs in a swimming pool'”
“You’re down in the third division, the first day away at some small club. There’s a fence, a swimming pool over the other side, the ball is going over and into the water,” Nash explains, laughing. “And you’re thinking: ‘Pfff, it’s a long way from Barcelona.'”
Holden leans forward, glances at Nash and grins. “I hate to say this, but Steve could play football professionally, 100%. He likes to think he’s a No. 10 [creative attacker]; I think he’s a No. 6 [deep-lying midfielder]. A Pirlo-lite. He’s has got vision, the same way he played basketball. People know he loves soccer, but when they play with him they’re like: ‘S—, I didn’t know he was actually good!’ Could he have made the Premier League? Hmm, maybe at a Burnley.”
Nash was an outlier as a soccer-mad basketball player, but no more. “It’s fun to see people love the game now. When I came into the NBA, no one knew anything. Now they all have a team.” Holden adds: “Don’t be the fan of the indie rock band who tells everyone you knew them before they were cool.”
Kohlberg says: “Steve came to Mallorca and spoke to the players, and we won 4-0. Then he went to Liverpool and they won 7-0. I texted him: ‘What did you say to these players?!'”
“Absolutely,” Kohlberg replies. “All he would need is an assistant who knew the tactics and he would be fine.”
Kerr is joking; Kohlberg is not, entirely. There is much shared across sports; their concepts and cultures guide the Mallorca project.
Kerr says: “I have a hard time recognizing formations while I’m watching, but I do recognize play in small triangles. One guy passes, the other makes a run, exactly like basketball.”
Kohlberg believes that the same attributes define a good coach across sport: “You have to be far smarter than people realize to be a good coach. A really good coach — even a tennis coach — has the same skill set; the ability to connect, communicate.”
Kohlberg says: “Some NBA owners go into the locker room before or after games. Having been an athlete, that’s kind of … ufff. The main thing is that we, as a leadership group, understand a winning culture. Getting a group to work together towards a common goal, rather than ‘I’m playing for my next contract,’ or ‘I’m playing for my brand,’ which is new to us as older athletes. The brand mentality, that wasn’t there.”
Sometimes it takes something exceptional to see that. The word Holden uses is “harmony” and that complicity, respect, don’t always come easy, or even the way you expect. Famously, as a player Kerr once got into a practice scuffle with Chicago Bulls teammate Michael Jordan; in due course, Jordan handed him responsibility for the championship-winning shot in 1997.
“You have to understand every player, their story. There’s a pressure Jordan and Steph Curry face every single day. The 15th guy on the roster’s pressure is ‘I have to get on the team, pay my bills.’ One of the reasons we have had such a great run with the Warriors [four NBA championships in seven years] is that Steph Curry has so much humanity. He understands that, somehow lives up to the standards he has set himself and has amazing compassion and empathy.
“I love that European football is church, a cathedral, religion,” Holden says. “It’s passed down through families.”
That imposes respect. Part of the challenge is bringing sport and business, the U.S. and Europe, together rather than pitting them against each other.
Imagine a scenario when a bad season was mitigated by Mallorca picking between Barcelona star Lamine Yamal or Real Madrid striker Kylian Mbappé. “I don’t think you’ll find anyone on the island who would say no,” Nash says.
Kerr laughs: “We’ll take ’em! The problem with it is the NBA season is 82 games and by the end, teams are jockeying for draft picks. They’re incentivized to lose and that makes no sense at all.”
Kerr laughs: “I think relegation is amazing: The competition it generates every match is something we lack here.”
Nash insists: “I wish we had that in the United States, that the regular season meant something. It’s nice to be part of [in Spain], even if we’re a little too close at the moment.”
After all, that mobility has allowed a group of sportsmen to see an opportunity in a struggling second-division club they could change, build, revive. A decade later, they’re still there.
“We’re proud; we’ve been resilient. Hopefully we can stabilize in the top 10,” Kohlberg says. Nash adds: “We didn’t come in to flip this; it’s a part of our lives. We don’t want to be out, we want to be in. I feel grateful for 10 years of learning, humble that they accepted us into their culture.”
It gave them a chance to keep competing, too. “The honest reason was so we could continue playing,” Holden laughs. “The first few years we would train with the first team. Then it was the B team. Then the U16s. And now … for five minutes we felt pretty good and then one of our players asked me: ‘So, do you like soccer?’ I played in the Premier League, man!
“I remember showering in the coach’s locker room, the shower head falling off, calling Andy: ‘I think we have to upgrade the locker room, man.’ To walk in now is unbelievable, the stadium is incredible. We’ve created an environment reflecting where we are — a first-division club. That speaks to the mentality of professional athletes, that constant drive, wanting to be better, find an edge.
“We’ve been friends a long time and you look forward to seeing them every day, collaborating. What Andy has done is incredible. Being part of a group that’s so well connected, so well meaning, that has created something special, makes me proud. It gives me a connection to LaLiga, to European football, and to my friends who are now on the same team as me.”
“The initial link is the Phoenix Suns: Steve Nash, Steve Kerr, myself and Robert Sarver were all there at various times,” Kohlberg says. “Steve Nash and Stu Holden have been very good friends for a long time. And we said: ‘Athletes understand.’ I have always believed that the winning mindset of sportsmen is similar, whether it’s basketball, football or tennis. Yes, there’s a difference in tennis as an individual sport where you don’t need to compromise but the mentality of the great athletes I played with — John McEnroe, Jimmy Connors, Ivan Lendl — was still similar to Lionel Messi, Cristiano Ronaldo, Steph Curry, Steve Nash or Steve Kerr.”
Nicer still to have brought them together here. This January marks the 10th anniversary of their $23.86 million purchase of Mallorca, with Kohlberg as president and, he says, former Suns owner Robert Sarver as the “driving force” (having bought Sarver’s stake in June, Kohlberg is now the majority shareholder). They had looked at clubs in the England’s second-tier Championship — “pretty pricey,” Nash admits — but when they saw Mallorca, struggling near the foot of the Segunda División at the time, they knew. “A gem,” Nash calls it.