Kyle Filipowski’s drop to the second spherical on this yr’s draft comes with a little bit of a twist as NBA groups have been reportedly hesitant over some off-court issues surrounding the previous Duke star.
The peculiar developments and allegations got here to mild Thursday forward of the second day of the draft after Filipowski had fallen out of the primary spherical, which confused some specialists.
Filipowski was ultimately chosen with the thirty second general choose by the Jazz.
However ESPN’s Jonathan Givony reported each on “The Lowe Post” podcast and on “NBA At the moment” that groups had been “speaking about” the age hole between Filipowski and his girlfriend, Caitlin Hutchison, and why he was allegedly estranged from his household.
Whereas Givony questioned why that may finally influence a staff’s choice to pick out him or not — calling it “nonsense” in the course of the podcast look — the ESPN draft reporter added to the narrative to the discourse surrounding Filipowski.
“NBA groups are speaking about the truth that they’d query marks about his girlfriend being a lot older than him, why was he estranged from his household due to this entire scenario,” Givony said on “NBA Today.” “He apparently doesn’t speak to his mother and father or his brother and It’s a really, very odd scenario. I personally don’t perceive why it could trigger him to drop like this into the second spherical.
“There are not any questions on his character, however NBA groups are speaking about his nerves and his exercises weren’t nice. And once they requested him in regards to the scenario in interviews the solutions they acquired weren’t passable for them.”
However the story didn’t cease there, as an individual purporting to be Filipowski’s brother and another X account claiming to be his mother made allegations that the ahead’s girlfriend had been “grooming” him and that Hutchison had “pressured” Filipowski to chop off his household two years in the past.
Each accounts had alleged this had been an ongoing difficulty and the account claiming to be his brother Daniel wrote that the story had been “pushed below the desk for practically two years now.”
Makes an attempt by The Submit to succeed in the individual purporting to be Filipowski’s brother have been unsuccessful on Thursday.
Hutchison is reportedly 26 years outdated whereas Filipowski turns 21 later this yr, and the primary picture of the 2 collectively on Hutchison’s Instagram was from Filipowski’s senior promenade in 2022.
Filipowski’s mother and father, David and Rebecca, each performed faculty basketball, in response to his bio on the Duke basketball web site, and he has three brothers, Daniel, Taylor and Matthew.
Further reporting by Dylan Svoboda