Tyrese Hunter reacts to Kevin Durant practicing with the team this offseason

As the Texas Longhorns practiced this offseason to prep for their upcoming season, they got a surprise visit from one of their most notable alumni, Brooklyn Nets forward Kevin Durant. Durant spent a week practicing with the team last month, and current Longhorn guard Tyrese Hunter spoke about the experience at Big 12 media day.

“It was surreal actually, we’re sitting in the locker room with him and I was just thinking like, this guy’s won championships, he played with (Stephen) Curry, it’s crazy,” Hunter said.

Hunter, and likely the rest of his teammates, were star-struck by the NBA superstar who once was in the same shoes as him, but took a valuable lesson from Durant on continuing to learn.

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“But it was great because he’s real, he just let us know authentically,” Hunter said. “He fit in with the drills, coach is out there teaching him stuff, and I’m thinking he’s gonna be teaching us stuff, but you just know that he had an open mindset to listen and that’s a big thing with him being who he is, his status, and just showing that he can listen and still grow just grows on us.”

Durant played one season for the Longhorns before being selected as the No. 2 overall pick of the 2007 NBA Draft. He won the Rookie of the Year award that season and went on to win two NBA Championships, two Finals MVP awards, and a regular season MVP. Seeing the 12-time All-Star pay a visit to his alma mater is special, but the mutual willingness to learn and grow with the current Texas team is truly a one of a kind experience.

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

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.

I Love my @TexasMBB family, coach is really building something special there. Lock in https://t.co/KxY4EFAOt9

— Kevin Durant (@KDTrey5) September 27, 2022

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.”

On3’s Andrew Graham contributed to this report