A few weeks ago, while working on the latest episode of Here They Come presented by GEICO, Studio 76 producer / editor Nina Raspa and I had the opportunity to spend about an hour on Zoom with Tyrese Maxey's parents, Denyse and Tyrone.
Right away, you could tell the couple has a special dynamic. The chemistry is easy and authentic, while their personalities are perfect complements. The Maxeys literally started, continued, and finished each other's sentences, and made it effortlessly evident that Tyrese was raised in a house filled with love.
Since Here They Come is a short-form video series, there was absolutely no way we could fit all of the excellent material the Maxeys gave us into Nina's final edit. To avoid leaving some great stories on the cutting room floor, we decided to share a few here.
And if you ever do track down one of those elusive Maxey brothers, please let us know.
It doesn't take a whole lot of time to see that Tyrese Maxey boasts an energetic, engaging, and infectious personality. Where did he get it from?
Denyse Maxey: Who knows. We have no idea. We've often asked ourselves that [question]. He is extremely outgoing. For me, I'm an incredible introvert. I'm comfortable here when I'm at home, but if you've ever seen me out at a game, I'm really not speaking to anyone. I'm very cordial but I'm incredibly introverted. Now my husband on the other hand...he doesn't meet a stranger and talks to everybody. But Tyrese, I just have no idea. He has this energy and this aura about who he is. It's amazing. I love it. I think it's amazing that, you know, God made him into what he is, but honestly we've talked about it here in the house and I have no idea where all of that [personality] comes from. We didn't teach it here, but he's been like that since Day One.
When Denyse and Tyrone Maxey met, each already had a daughter from a previous relationship. Then they had Tyrese, as well as a second child together, another girl. Well, that didn't sit too well with a young Tyrese, at least initially.
Tyrone Maxey: He wanted a brother so bad.
Denyse Maxey: He wanted a brother so bad that he made up, for several years, that he had three brothers. These were imaginary brothers. I mean it was bad. It was questionable if these three brothers really existed to the point to where everybody would ask us, 'Does he really have these three brothers?' And we would be like, 'No, he does not have three brothers.'
TM: Tell them their names.
DM: Shardrow, Cardrow, and Pardrow.
They existed for a good two three years. They finally graduated from high school. It's almost embarrassing to tell the story - he's gonna have a fit when he hears it back. But yeah, three imaginary brothers...
He did not have any brothers.
Throughout Tyrese Maxey's life, his dad has served as his coach. Tyrone Maxey played in college at Washington State for Kelvin Sampson, and later landed a coaching gig at SMU. Denyse, in addition to wearing many other hats, acted as the family's content creator, shooting video of Tyrese's journey every step of the way.
Tyrone Maxey: When [Tyrese] came out of the womb, I put a teddy bear [in his crib] and it played an anthem song and he would light up everytime, every morning before I went to work. I should have known then he was going to love bright lights.
I started to coach him when he was in second grade, and we trained hard every day. I just knew he was going to be special when he was in fifth grade, when he played in the city championship game and he scored 45 points with a broken finger. He broke his finger in the first quarter and scored 45 points and I was like, 'Man, this kid is...he's gonna be pretty amazing.'
I've just always had a passion for [coaching] and he just kind of adopted the same passion. We watched games together and talked basketball about players. He just loved it. I never forced it on him. He just fell in love with it, but on his own.
Denyse Maxey: My husband's poured everything he has into Tyrese. He was the one if Tyrese wanted to get up at five in the morning and go train, if he wanted to learn more about a special defense that the team was going to offer - Tyrese has been watching film on his opponent, as well as on himself, since elementary school.
In fact, he would watch his dad so much drawing up plays for [Tyrone's] teams that he started to write x's and o's before he learned how to write his name. Literally, Tyrone do you remember? He would take his dad's paper and go and scribble x's and o's and pretend like he was drawing out plays and he didn't even know how to write his name.
We would say Tyrese needs to go outside and play, or you know do some of the things that other kids are doing. Then we kind of just realized no, he doesn't want to. He just wants to play with his basketball hoop in the backyard.
[Tyrese] didn't do normal stuff. He didn't have any interest in riding a bike, even though he knows how to. He wanted to dribble the ball.
I wasn't the basketball expert in the family, but I knew how to be a mom. So I just sat back and let them do their thing and have their arguments and fights, and I just kind of played referee from time to time.
He was special from day one, special from day one.
Even several months removed from draft night, it's hard to forget the raw emotion Tyrese Maxey displayed on television after hearing his name called. He was surrounded by family, and vowed the 76ers wouldn't regret taking him with the 21st pick.
Denyse Maxey: I don't know if you saw the video...that's not me screaming, okay? We were upstairs and then we had family members downstairs. As his name is called, one of his aunts downstairs is screaming hysterically. So as the night goes on, I'm super happy yes, but Tyrese says, 'Mom you're popular! Everybody's talking about you screaming online.' I said, 'What are you talking about?'
I go back and I'm looking at the video and...I'm sorry, that's not me! It just happened simultaneously. They're teasing me because I'm super-introverted and now I'm freaking out because everybody thinks it's me screaming. They gave me a hard time about it! Seriously! That shouldn't be the highlight of the night.
But on a serious note, it was...an amazing day. Just gosh, hearing his name. I think we're still in shock. A lot of people ask us - even my mother asked me as we were watching a [recent] game - 'How does it feel to be an NBA mom?'
I don't know. I think it's really hard. I'd have to talk to other parents and see, but it's your kid… you're a mom and have an NBA player. It's hard for me to separate the two. I don't just look at him as an NBA player. I'm looking at him and thinking is he okay, how is he doing, how is he dealing with everything? I look at so many other things to where I don't really just focus on him being an NBA player. But it's a million families' dreams to hear their son's name or their daughter's name called out on that platform, so it's just amazing.
As his son's primary coach, Tyrone Maxey admitted that here and there, he had to walk a delicate tightrope in his relationship with Tyrese. The balancing act wasn't always easy.
Tyrone Maxey: Fortunately, I got my wife to kind of be the mediator. I tried love on him a little bit, tell him what he does good and does bad. I'm his dad, and so I feel like he knows that I have his best interests at heart. He knows that but it's tough man, it is tough. I've been a coach and dad in the same household. I'm real serious about the game. I am. I'm passionate. We always worked it out.
Denyse Maxey: With [Tyrone and Tyrese], they're extremely passionate and extremely competitive. I'm always kind of in the middle. I'm trying to get across what his dad is trying to say but soften it up. I'm trying to tell them what everyone's trying to say. It can be tough, but you know you just got to figure it out as a parent.
[Tyrese] is in the NBA now. It is different now. You don't know what he's feeling since we're not there. We can't get in front of him and we're not at the games to see what emotions he's feeling when he goes to the sideline. We're watching it on TV, so we don't know. You kind of have to feel him out a little bit.
After every game, I talk to Tyrese. My thing in the NBA since I can't be there now is I send him a text - "good game," "good win," "proud of you," "keep working." Something funny, usually.
Denyse and Tyrone Maxey never missed one of Tyrese's games, whether he was playing in city leagues, high school, or at Kentucky. Over the past year, due to the pandemic, things changed. As of February, Denyse and Tyrone still hadn't seen Maxey play an NBA game yet. Both parents, however, focus on the big picture. They know their son, and subsequently the entire Maxey family, is living out a dream.
Denyse Maxey: I don't know how to bottle this up so that you can understand what it feels like, particularly when there's so many parents out there who put so much work into getting their kids [to the NBA]. Every weekend, three out of four weekends of the month, we were in a gym somewhere, traveling here and there, spending money that we didn't have, pulling money from savings accounts, pulling money from retirement accounts, making sure [Tyrese] had everything he needed to get where he is today. That's a lot. I don't know if people really understand or truly understand what some parents go through to get [their child] to this level. It is not easy. For us, it was super hard, super hard packing them up every weekend taking them somewhere.
Tyrone Maxey: It was fun.
DM: It was a lot of fun. We had a lot of laughs, but it wasn't easy and he's traveled from the time he was seven years old until he left to go to Kentucky - every summer, the whole summer we were gone. I saved vacation days; my laptop has always traveled with me.
It was a lot, so to see him, to turn that TV on - as we can't go to the games now - and see him, it's just an amazing feeling.
TM: It's a blessing. I told Tyrese on draft night, I said, 'Man, do you realize how blessed you are?'
I played basketball, all my friends played ball. Everybody who plays basketball, they aspire to go where you are going. It is a blessing, so that's the only thing I can say: he's blessed. Blessed. Everybody is blessed.
Select photos courtesy of Denyse and Tyrone Maxey.