While Kyle Filipowski sat among basketball’s best prospects in the NBA draft’s green room in Brooklyn, his mother spent that June night at her home in Westtown, N.Y.
They were 75 miles and a world apart, both hoping for very different things.
As the minutes ticked by, Kyle waited for his name to be called and his professional career to start.
For her part, Becky Filipowski hoped, as ever, for a comfort she said she has been unable to find since her relationship with her son fell apart.
“It’s like a loose wire in my brain,” she says. “Some days I can find some peace, and there are days that are pretty painful.”
And, as the biggest moment of her son’s basketball career approached, in the hours before he was drafted by the Utah Jazz with the 32nd overall pick, she made her pain public. She asserted on social media that her 20-year-old son’s girlfriend, a 26-year-old he began dating as a senior in high school, had driven a wedge between the young basketball star and his family.
Families have falling-outs for all sorts of reasons. But these allegations exploded, becoming a viral story with little context or reporting.
Now, Becky Filipowski wants to explain her side of the story.
ESPN’s Filipowski report goes viral
It all started with a report.
Kyle had been invited to the NBA draft’s green room, an honor extended to presumptive top picks. After he waited uncomfortably without hearing his name called that night, people wondered why he had fallen out of the first round.
ESPN’s Jonathan Givony gave a possible answer.
“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 the “NBA Today” podcast. “He apparently doesn’t talk to his parents or his brother, and it’s a very, very odd situation. … And when they asked him about the situation in interviews, the answers they got weren’t satisfactory for them.”
When Becky saw Givony’s report circulating online, she chimed in.
“You are opening a two-year issue… and she is 28 (sic) with an endgame 3 years ago to have a diamond ring on her hand when Kyle left Duke. He was still in HS,” she wrote on X, formerly known as Twitter.
Daniel Filipowski, Kyle’s brother, also posted on social media: “Look up and read on Mormon grooming and brainwashing and you’ll find some introductory details in there to connect some dots into the story.”
The posts blew up. Becky’s tweet got 250,000 impressions and was circulated in stories from the New York Post to the Toronto Sun to The Mirror in the United Kingdom. When you type Filipowski’s name into Google, there are 14 pages of search results speculating about his family dynamic and his fiancée, Caitlin Hutchison.
(Utah Jazz) Kyle Filipowski, the No. 32 overall pick in the 2024 NBA Draft, is introduced by the Utah Jazz on July 2.
A popular podcaster, Jack Parodi, garnered more than 5.3 million views while speculating on Kyle’s situation. A Fox Sports employee got more than 7.6 million views for spreading a false claim that Kyle and his girlfriend were cousins.
Others focused on Becky.
“Stop trying to blame everybody else, you and your family are mostly to blame if we are looking to play that game,” a person wrote on X. Another said the mother “shouldn’t have brought this story up on the biggest day of his life.”
Becky listened to a lot of it.
“It was like the dam gates had been opened. And almost three years’ worth of trying to sweep it under the rug, and trying to check him out of our lives [ended],” she said in an interview. “Then that happened, and it was like, ‘Oh my god. It’s out in the open.’ And just out of the nature that nobody is speaking the truth to power, that they are just speculating about all this sh--.”
A mother’s perspective
As Becky sees it, the first element that needs to be cleared up is the nature of the relationship between Kyle and Caitlin Hutchison.
The Hutchisons and Filipowskis were family friends. Caitlin’s mother, Amanda, was hired as an athletic trainer by Becky after Becky graduated from California State University, Long Beach.
In June 2016, the Filipowskis hosted the Hutchisons for a barbecue in New York. That’s when a younger Kyle was photographed with Caitlin — an image that has since been used online to spread false claims.
Five years later, Becky said, her son and Caitlin met again at the 2021 Peach Jam, one of the country’s largest high school basketball showcases.
Kyle was 17 and a highly ranked recruit. Caitlin had graduated from college, Becky said. After the showcase, Becky said, she asked her son about Caitlin, and he said they weren’t dating.
Kyle went to a Massachusetts boarding school, Wilbraham & Monson Academy, for his senior season. He turned 18 in November 2021. That winter, when he returned home for holiday break, Becky recalls, he said that he and Caitlin were dating.
Kyle’s high school basketball coach, Mike Mannix, said that was around the time he met Caitlin.
“Any conversation that took place about them being boyfriend and girlfriend,” Mannix said, “none of that came to me until at the very earliest January.”
According to Becky, her son said Caitlin would “protect him from other girls, drugs and alcohol” when he went to college at Duke the next year. In May 2022, Kyle posted a photo with Caitlin above the caption “People will stare. Make it worth their while” and the hashtag #prom.
Caitlin declined to comment for this story.
Becky said she began voicing her concerns about the relationship more often. She said she told the staff at Duke, where Kyle would play collegiately, about her fears during her son’s recruitment.
“I warned them about things that were going on,” she said. “And even then, they’re like, ‘OK, well, you know, we’ve got it.’”
Meanwhile, Becky said, she could feel the distance growing between her and her son for other reasons.
Becky said she has struggled with her mental health since her mother and grandmother died a month apart some years ago, sending her into a depressive spiral. Then, she said, she was diagnosed with cancer during Kyle’s senior year and went through treatments that made it difficult to be involved in her son’s life.
“I ended up having to go to the dorm parent a lot for information,” Becky said. “But that winter, when things were getting a little crazy, it was hard. I couldn’t catch up with him half the time because he was traveling. … I knew I was missing out on all of the things that they did because I didn’t live with them.”
When Kyle went to Duke the next year, his mother said, their ties frayed further. Becky said she watched the Blue Devils play a game against Ohio State but was not allowed to see her son afterward. Eventually, she said, he stopped leaving tickets for his family.
Becky said she tried to go to her son and “understand what she didn’t understand” about their relationship but was never satisfied with the answers. She said she asked Duke’s general manager to set up counseling sessions.
Duke declined to comment for this story.
Becky began exploring The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and grew convinced for a time that her son was the victim of what her family has called “Mormon grooming.” But after being asked about it further, Becky said, she doesn’t really believe that was the case.
“This behavior would be bad [for Hutchison],” she said, “regardless of what faith she was.”
In a text message sent in February 2023, Kyle expressed his frustration about his family’s behavior to his brother Daniel.
“I don’t need you sh---ing on me and my relationship because you don’t know anything [about] it,” according to the message, which was shared with The Salt Lake Tribune.
In an email sent in April 2023, Kyle said he had endured “emotional abuse” by a family that couldn’t accept his relationship with Caitlin.
“I did everything I could to convince you to support me and my choices, and you made the choice not to,” he wrote. “... Because of the way you’ve treated me and how you continue to treat me, I don’t want you in my life. I wanted you to hear it from me.”
After the Utah Jazz drafted Kyle on June 27, the team said it had no concerns about his family situation.
“We do deep background on all the draft prospects,” Steven Schwartz, Jazz vice president of basketball strategy, said. “We’re more than happy to have Kyle join the Jazz, and we’re comfortable with everything going on. Really we’re excited about who he is as a person, so we’re not concerned about that at all.”
The Jazz declined to make any additional comment for this story.
Last week, Kyle signed his first professional contract.
Looking toward the future
When the hurt becomes too much, Becky said, she thinks about a cemetery in southern New York, where her mother and grandmother were laid to rest. Their deaths shattered her, she said, but she feels the separation from her son has caused a deeper pain.
“The grieving process,” she added, “never ends.”
Her family’s story going viral has brought new hurt.
(Bethany Baker | The Salt Lake Tribune) Philadelphia 76ers Keve Aluma (27) shoots as Utah Jazz forward Kyle Filipowski (22) blocks during the game at the Delta Center during the Salt Lake City Summer League in Salt Lake City on Wednesday, July 10, 2024.
“We didn’t ask for this. ESPN came out with that report and opened this up. We responded to that. This has been an issue, painful for us for years before draft night,” Becky said, though her X profile does include posts about her falling out with Kyle at least as far back as April.
But she added: “I’m seeing all these reports and they are speculating without doing any research. … Sometimes I wish we never spoke about it.”
Throughout a series of phone interviews since the draft, Becky acknowledged there “might have been the writing on the wall in hindsight” when it comes to her relationship with her son. But the mother of four says “the other three had issues like that, too, and they’re still here. He’s taken this to a whole other level.”
Becky said she knows she is not blameless. She wonders if she pushed her son too much about his relationship with Caitlin.
Still, she said she feels hurt.
“I gave [my boys] everything I earned,” Becky said, noting she quit her teaching job early and poured money into AAU to allow Kyle to play at the highest level. She added that her husband, David, retired when Kyle and his twin brother were college freshmen “because we figured we would be traveling all over the place and seeing their games [at Duke and Harvard]. So he took an early retirement so that it would make it easier. We haven’t been anywhere.”
But she believes she’s changed over the years.
“Kyle has it in his mind, ‘Well, I’m not going to say this to Mom, because I know what she’s going to say.’ Well, he’s missing out because Mom has changed. That’s my metamorphosis,” she said. “... I’m constantly battling their assumption that I’m still the same person that raised them.”
And now she said she is trying to move on.
“That’s what I’ve gotten to now,” she said, “is trying to change my outlook.”
