In their honor: FGCU's Kerstie Phills lives, plays in legacy to parents, including late father Bobby Phills of NBA

Kerstie Phills’ warmth shines through in her short video introduction to FGCU fans.

“I got into basketball ever since I was 6 years old,” says Phills, her voice and smile bright as she goes on to explain her family legacy, which some might already know.

“My dad played in the NBA.”

Suddenly, subtly, her brightness softens. Her eyes – her father’s eyes, her mother says – tell the tragic side of that story, which some might remember, too.

“I love to live in his legacy,” Phills says, “and be the best player I can.”

Bobby Phills, revered in his former NBA towns of Cleveland and Charlotte for the selfless person he was off the court and the player he willed himself into on the pine, died in a car crash Jan. 12, 2000, in Charlotte after speeding with teammate David Wesley and skidding into oncoming traffic.

Phills, a 6-foot-5 guard who Michael Jordan famously called the toughest defender he’d ever faced, was 30. There were no other fatalities.

Among many lives changed forever were those of his wife, Kendall, and their two children, Bobby Phills III, known as Trey, who was 3 at the time; and Kerstie, who was 19 months old.

“I never got to know my dad,” said Kerstie, 20, a redshirt sophomore who transferred to FGCU in the summer of 2017 after a strong freshman season at Wagner University in Staten Island, New York.

“I know that he worked very hard in his career in just getting to the NBA. My mom always tells me that I’m a reflection of my father. I play for him, every single game that I play.”

Given her youth, Kerstie’s voice hasn’t been heard as much in stories in recent years looking back at her father and the aftermath of his death.

Included was a 2015 Grantland piece that delved into the hard lessons of grief, regret and even anger, which were enough to drive his high school and college coaches out of the game, and with which others never stopped wrestling.

Kerstie understands it all.

“It’s still hard growing up without a father,” she said, but only after showing the “XIII” – for her father’s No. 13 uniform number she also wears – that is tattooed on her left wrist.

“You kind of learn to live with it and just go about your life the way it’s always been, because I was so young. But you have a whole entire community around you. They always want to watch my games.

“And my mom is the strongest woman you will ever meet. I love her so much. She’s so amazing and so supportive. That’s how I keep my strength and my positive outlook, because life is very short, and you can’t really take anything for granted. You really have to be appreciative of the people who are there and who love you.”

The Family Game

At the crash site just down the road from where the Hornets held a shootaround that morning 19 years ago, Kendall Phills convinced Bobby’s teammates and rescue personnel to let her see her high school sweetheart, who died instantly in the Porsche police said he was driving more than 100 mph.

Her prayers and goodbye included the promise to take care of their children.

For Kerstie and Trey, a senior starting guard at Yale, that has meant so much more than playing the family game, although those with fond memories of Bobby Phills’ game will probably delight in hearing that Kerstie, like Trey, also takes great pride in her defense.

“You’re looking at my muscles here,” Kerstie, laughing, said of the strong shoulders and arms she got from her dad, not to mention powerful legs. “I may be nice off the court, but on the court I love getting in a stance, getting locked in and getting stops for my team.”

In 11 games this season the 5-foot-9 Phills is averaging just 4.4 points and 2.5 rebounds in 13.5 minutes.

But the former Northeast Conference Rookie of the Year, who averaged team-highs of 13.1 points and 6.9 rebounds at Wagner but left in search of a winning program, started the first six games this season before straining a calf muscle.

Season preview:The fastest of times for FGCU women

Last Sunday, she got to make a near-homecoming when FGCU (9-4) visited Duke in Durham, about two hours from her native Charlotte. The Eagles lost, 57-41, and Phills made a 3-pointer in six minutes.

That game coincidentally followed Trey’s visit to Durham on Dec. 8, when the 6-2, three-year starter had four points and three steals with a number of family and friends in attendance for Yale’s 91-58 loss to the Blue Devils.

“She’s really an explosive athlete, and she’s somebody who’s very aggressive and competitive,” said program-founding, 17th-year FGCU coach Karl Smesko, 48, an Akron native who was a sports intern at a Cleveland TV station when Bobby Phills played for the Cavaliers, which was from 1992-97.

“She’s a good rebounder, a good defender. I do think she’ll end up being a really good scorer. She’s really just trying to learn the game and be able to play at a higher level.”

In another goosebump-raising nod to her father – whose college coach at Southern University in Phills’ native Baton Rouge, Louisiana, made him take a thousand shots a day to rebuild a shot that once had a flying elbow – Kerstie worked countless hours on her shot this summer with Smesko.

She recently buried the 5,000th 3-pointer in the history of the mid-major power that uses a five-guard motion offense and is known for its prolific outside shooting.

“It was non-stop. He had me shooting with one hand at one point, and he was like, ‘You’re going to get this right. You’re going to shoot how we shoot at FGCU,’” Phills said. “It’s been a lot, and I’ve been grateful that he’s been so patient with me.”

Phills knows the parallel here, too, to her dad, who Wagner University aptly noted was a “3 and D” wing before such a term was common vernacular in the NBA.

“He set records in college,” she said of her dad, who led the country with 4.4 3-pointers per game as a senior and hit 10 triples in a 52-point game against Alcorn State in front of NBA scouts.

“I’m still working. I’m getting better. And as a team obviously I want to win a championship with my team and get to the Sweet 16. We’ve got big goals. We’re going to reach them. I’m confident.”

'The Giving Tree'

It’s right there in her FGCU biography.

“… favorite book is The Giving Tree …” Phills’ bio says of the bittersweet 1964 children’s book by Shel Silverstein, about an apple tree that gives all it has to a boy it loves.

“It’s so beautiful,” said Phills, trying not to cry. “If you have the ability to just give a little piece of yourself and be compassionate toward other people who need it, then you should be able to do it.”

Phills says yes when asked if her selfless nature may be inherited from her mother. Or her father. Or learned from watching her mother's philanthropy. Or maybe even from trying to fill the void in her own life.

Whatever the reason, Phills is studying to become a physician’s assistant and wants to work in pediatrics or orthopedics. This summer, she volunteered at Golisano Children’s Hospital, comforting and playing with kids and infants who were in extended care.

“All the time I’ve heard that my dad was such a helpful hand in the community, that he had a loving nature,” she said. “And my mom has been nothing but loving and caring. She’s always giving to others, and I want to be just like her.”

Before her kids’ visit home on Christmas, Kendall told them they weren’t getting any gifts, that they were going to a homeless shelter to serve others. No one objected.

“I don’t need anything for Christmas,” Kerstie told her mom. “We can just do what we do.”

Bobby Phills also never failed to give to others, author Jonathan Abrams wrote for Grantland.

“There was the time he jumped out of his car at an intersection to help a motorcyclist who was engulfed in flames after crashing into a nearby truck,” Abrams wrote. “If you had five minutes to spare for Phills, he had 10 minutes for you.”

It isn’t lost on Phills’ family that he died doing something reckless – which he and Wesley had been cited for before and Abrams reported Phills had been warned by those close to him to stop – that also endangered others. Indeed, the other primary crash victim nearly died from a flattened aorta.

“Bobby made the choice to drive at a high rate of speed,” Kendall Phills told Abrams.

While some were angry with Wesley, who was convicted of a reckless driving misdemeanor and fought through his own shroud of guilt and regret, Kendall has spoken at schools about the dangers of speeding through her campaign called “Speed a Little. Lose a Lot.” It’s a state-sanctioned campaign in North Carolina.

Has there been anger? Yes, Kerstie said. But here, too, she embraces the same message, of faith and acceptance, and of life making no promises.

The Wesley family, after all, is among those still close with the Phills family.

“I don’t want to be cliché and say everything happens for a reason,” Kerstie said. “But if God is telling him that it’s his time to go, sometimes we don’t have the answer for it.

“You do get closer to God, and you have a stronger faith. I guess without it I wouldn’t be the strong young woman that I am today.”

The flipside to that message – of mindfulness and responsibility to oneself and others – can be hard, especially on young people.

“She tries to teach people every day the importance of your decisions,” Kerstie said of her mother. “That’s instilled in my brother and I, just conscious thinking, how we go about our daily life. It is hard. But it’s what we were raised in.”

What we do

Only minutes before Phills sat to talk, FGCU completed an unsatisfactory shootaround in preparation for a game against UAB, which FGCU went on to lose 62-60.

After admonishing his team's lack of focus, Smesko turned to his players to speak. 

Phills was the one who did. Because that, too, is part of her family legacy.

“She’s a great kid,” Smesko said. “Everybody on the team I think looks up to her as a leader. She’s somebody that’s a very conscientious person about what she says. She does the right thing.”

Smesko called Phills a perfectionist, which he said can make her work harder but also makes going through adjustments, such as to a new program, difficult. 

“She’s a really talented player and a really bright young lady and kind of a joy to be around," he said.

Of her father, Phills ultimately concluded, “I know I’m going to see him in heaven when I get there. And I feel like, obviously, he’s still a part of me. He’s in my heart every day.”

As she spoke, her voice was soft and thoughtful. But her smile was never more than a moment away.

“Sometimes if I’m not feeling it, I’ll try to fake a smile just to give other people happiness if I can’t give it to myself,” she said. “But yeah, I’m a pretty joyful person.”

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