From Ewing to Garnett, these NCAA volleyball players have legendary dads - ESPN

Kevin Garnett scoots closer to his computer screen and stares intently at me through Zoom. Then he looks off to the side. Like he's trying to conjure the specific memory his daughter shared with me earlier.

I tell the NBA legend that Kapri told me it was the most important piece of advice he ever gave her. That it's etched in her brain. That it helped shape her volleyball career.

Now he nods. He knows.

«She went to a new club,» he says, gesturing. «This is one of the best teams in California, so guess what comes with that? Responsibility, accountability, and the coach has to put you in these dark places where you can grow a second skin, right?»

He picks up his pace.

«She had a bad exchange with the coach,» he says. «The coach really laid into her.»

«Said some real s--- to her,» he says.

He tells me he asked her to repeat what the coach said.

«It had cursing in it.»

Then he made her scream it the way her coach did.

«It had rage in it.»

He's smiling now.

He's heard it all. He was a teenager when he made it in the NBA, he tells me, and he learned early on how to speak to his coaches and his teammates, how to effectively receive feedback.

«I told her, 'Coaches use their finger. Coaches spit. Coaches get loud. Coaches curse.'»

He pauses. «Excuse what I'm saying,» he says to me. His smile is wider.

«I was like, 'F--- how they saying it, Listen to what they saying.'»

He crosses his arms over his chest. Sits back. Nods again.

Twelve days earlier, Kapri Garnett, now a 6-foot-4 freshman opposite hitter at Michigan, says she takes his advice — «listen to the message, not the delivery,» is how she recalls it — every time she steps onto the volleyball court.

«She said you opened her eyes,» I tell him.

«We're all like, 'Whoa,'» Texas