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Kevin Durant on Chris Beard: He's really building something special

On3 imageby:Andrew Graham•09/27/22•

AndrewEdGraham

On3 image
AUSTIN, TX - SEPTEMBER 14: Kevin Durant of the Oklahoma City Thunder enjoys the game from the sidelines as the Texas Longhorns host the Mississippi Rebels on September 14, 2013 at Darrell K Royal-Texas Memorial Stadium in Austin, Texas. (Photo by Cooper Neill/Getty Images)

It’s all love when it comes to Texas basketball head coach Chris Beard and former Longhorn star Kevin Durant.

In a clip shared by Tyler Feldman of KVUE in Austin, Beard discusses the experiences he and his team got to share with Durant when he was back on campus recently to be inducted in the schools athletics hall of fame. Durant shared the clip, adding his own ringing endorsement of Beard and the Longhorns

“I Love my Texas men’s basketball family, coach is really building something special there. Lock in,” Durant wrote.

In the clip, Beard gushed about Durant, firstly for his basketball ability.

“Yeah it’s awesome. Been fortunate to coach a lot of great places where you have a lot of returning players come back. KD, you know, in my opinion, is the best player on the planet,” Beard said.

More than that, though, what left Beard blown away was how present Durant was, and how deep the connection to his alma mater really is. There’s talking the talk, and then there’s walking the walk like Durant did.

“But what I would tell you about KD is that his relationship with Texas basketball is real. It’s not fluff. It’s not like the celebrity comes back, signs a couple of things. It was real. he invested so much time in his week here. He went above and beyond. It was almost humbling. It was like, ‘KD, enough man, we need to get you out the side door.’ He spent real time with out players, he spent real time with our staff. There was nothing fluff about it,” Beard said.

He continued: “Learned so many lessons just observing him and being around him in the quality time we had last week, culminating in the night where he got in the hall of fame. It was just awesome. We had everybody in our organization there. They wouldn’t let us in the first couple of rows, but we worked our way back to row 50 and we were glad to be there. But just shoutout to KD. Obviously, you see the greatest player in school history come back and he was here man. He was really here. He spent time in our locker room, he was hanging out at practice, he was getting shots up, he was checking in with us. It was awesome, so appreciative of him.”