The situation between Kyle Filipowski and his family became one of the most bizarre and talked about storylines to come out of the 2024 NBA Draft, and now Becky Filipowski, Kyle’s mother, is breaking her silence to tell her side of the story.
Filipowski was selected 32nd overall by the Jazz, despite the expectation that he would be taken in the first round.
He then awkwardly found himself sitting in the NBA draft green room without hearing his name called.
In the day that followed, ESPN reported that teams had become wary of the Duke product because of his relationship with a “much older” girlfriend and how he was estranged from his family.
It sent into motion a chain of social media posts from Becky and Daniel Filipowski, Kyle’s brother, that only raised more questions.
“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],” Becky said in an interview with the Salt Lake City Tribune published on Thursday.
“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 s–t.”
At the heart of the rift between Filipowski and his family is his relationship with Caitlin Hutchison, a woman purported to be seven years older than him and whom he began seeing while he was still in high school.
While speculation has run rampant over the nature of the connection, Becky confirmed the Filipowskis and Hutchinsons were family friends and that the two family matriarchs played college basketball together at California State University Long Beach.
Red flags began to appear to Becky after her son revealed in the winter of 2021, shortly after he turned 18, that he had started dating Hutchinson, whom he had reconnected with earlier that year at a high school basketball showcase while he was still 17 and she had graduated college.
Filipowski was attending at Wilbraham & Monson Academy in Massachusetts for his senior year of high school and told his mom when he came back for winter break.
Becky told the Tribune that her son said Hutchinson would “protect him from other girls, drugs and alcohol” when he started college at Duke, but the mother was unswayed and began voicing concerns.
“I warned them about things that were going on,” Becky said about conversations she had with the Duke staff during her son’s recruitment. “And even then, they’re like, ‘OK, well, you know, we’ve got it.’”
The rift between her and her son grew, but despite allegations from Daniel of “Morman grooming,” Becky didn’t believe there was a religious aspect to the stranglehold she felt Hutchinson had on Kyle.
“This behavior would be bad [for Hutchison],” she said, “regardless of what faith she was.”
The rift continued to deepen while Kyle was at Duke and in February of last year he sent an angry text to his brother telling him that he “need you s–ting on me and my relationship.”
And in April, he appeared to sever ties with his family through email over the “emotional abuse” around their discontent about his relationship with Hutchinson.
“I did everything I could to convince you to support me and my choices, and you made the choice not to,” Kyle 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.”
Since then Becky has questioned whether she pushed Kyle too far over the relationship.
Becky also said she had struggles with her mental health following the deaths of her mother and grandmother and then later dealing with a cancer diagnosis during Kyle’s senior year while he was away at Wilbraham & Monson Academy.
She told the outlet that she has had issues with her other sons, Kyle had “taken this to a whole other level.”
“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.”
