Kyle Filipowski’s drop to the second round in this year’s draft comes with a bit of a twist as NBA teams were reportedly hesitant over some off-court concerns surrounding the former Duke star.
The peculiar developments and allegations came to light Thursday ahead of the second day of the draft after Filipowski had fallen out of the first round, which confused some experts.
Filipowski was eventually selected with the 32nd overall pick by the Jazz.
But ESPN’s Jonathan Givony reported both on “The Lowe Post” podcast and on “NBA Today” that teams had been “talking about” the age gap between Filipowski and his girlfriend, Caitlin Hutchison, and why he was allegedly estranged from his family.
While Givony questioned why that would ultimately impact a team’s decision to select him or not — calling it “nonsense” during the podcast appearance — the ESPN draft reporter added to the narrative to the discourse surrounding Filipowski.
“NBA teams are talking about the fact that they had question marks about his girlfriend being so much older than him, why was he estranged from his family because of this whole situation,” Givony said on “NBA Today.” “He apparently doesn’t talk to his parents or his brother and It’s a very, very odd situation. I personally don’t understand why it would cause him to drop like this into the second round.
“There are no questions about his character, but NBA teams are talking about his nerves and his workouts weren’t great. And when they asked him about the situation in interviews the answers they got weren’t satisfactory for them.”
But the story didn’t stop there, as a person purporting to be Filipowski’s brother and another X account claiming to be his mother made allegations that the forward’s girlfriend had been “grooming” him and that Hutchison had “forced” Filipowski to cut off his family two years ago.
Both accounts had alleged this had been an ongoing issue and the account claiming to be his brother Daniel wrote that the story had been “pushed under the table for nearly two years now.”
Attempts by The Post to reach the person purporting to be Filipowski’s brother were unsuccessful on Thursday.
Hutchison is reportedly 26 years old while Filipowski turns 21 later this year, and the first photo of the two together on Hutchison’s Instagram was from Filipowski’s senior prom in 2022.
Filipowski’s parents, David and Rebecca, both played college basketball, according to his bio on the Duke basketball website, and he has three brothers, Daniel, Taylor and Matthew.
Additional reporting by Dylan Svoboda
