His family history had already earned him an unpleasant Draft night, having to wait in vain for his name to be called by Adam Silver. Although invited to the Green Room, Kyle Filipowski had actually waited until the next day to finally be drafted in 32nd position by the Jazz.
Since the Draft, the general public has discovered one of the supposed origins of this decline in the Draft: the NBA franchises were concerned about the family situation of the former Duke center.
The parents and brother of the Jazz rookie accuse the player's fiancée, Caitlin Hutchison, of “manipulate and control him psychologically”. She was even the one who forced him to cut ties with his family. All this should have remained within the family circle, but ESPN revealed everything in broad daylight.
“It was like the floodgates had opened. And almost three years of trying to sweep it under the rug and trying to exclude it from our lives was over.”, explains the player's mother. “Then it happened, and it's like everything came out in the open. Nobody's trying to find out the truth, and everybody's just speculating about the whole thing.”
Manipulated by his fiancée?
Becky and the Filipowski family had tried to alert Duke about the situation. The kingpin's mother wanted to inform the university about Caitlin Hutchison's influence over their son, and the university's administration responded that it was handling the situation. Since the story was revealed, the family has often highlighted the age difference (7 years apart) and the fact that Hutchison is Mormon. In the Salt Lake Tribune, we learn that Kyle Filipowski met his future fiancée when he was 12 years old. She was 19. Their two families were close.
It was only after his departure for Duke that the young player began to really distance himself from his family, reaching a point of no return by announcing to them that he was cutting ties with a simple… email!
“I did everything I could to convince you to support me and my choices, and you chose not to,” wrote Kyle Filipowski in April 2023. “Given the way you have treated me and the way you continue to treat me, I don't want you in my life anymore. I wanted you to hear it from me.”
Kyle Filipowski Cuts Ties With Family
As he no longer bothered to spend time with his family after games, Filipowski eventually stopped giving them tickets to his games.
“I gave everything I earned to my children”concludes Becky Filipowski, who explains that she had left her job to devote herself entirely to the beginning of her son's career. She adds that her husband had retired when Kyle and his twin were in their first year of college. “Because we thought we were going to travel all over the place and see their games at Duke and Harvard. So he took early retirement to make it easier. We haven't been anywhere.”
