A day after going unselected in the first round of the 2024 NBA Draft, Kyle Filipowski now has a new home.
The Jazz took Filipowski — a Middletown, New York native — with the 32nd overall pick during the second round of the draft on Thursday afternoon.
The fact that Filipowski had fallen out of the first round stunned a lot of experts and even drew a reaction from superstar Jayson Tatum, who won an NBA title with the Celtics earlier this month.
“Lot of teams gone regret passing up on Flip,” Tatum wrote in the early hours of Thursday morning.
The disappointment was clear on the face of Filipowski in a video posted to social media that showed him being comforted by what appeared to be his fiancée Caitlin Hutchison in the bowels of Barclays Center on Wednesday night.
If other teams come to regret passing on the 20-year-old — as Tatum predicted — the Jazz won’t be one of them after picking up the Duke Blue Devils standout.
Filipowski is coming off a standout season for Duke where he averaged 16.4 points and 8.3 rebounds per game in 36 starts while putting up solid defensive numbers, averaging 1.5 blocks and 1.1 steals per game.
There had been speculation that Filipowski had fallen in the draft due to bad interviews and workouts.
“The workouts weren’t great, people tell me,” ESPN’s Jonathan Givony said on “The Lowe Post” podcast this week. “There were question marks about the interviews. He was nervous. He didn’t make shots at the pro day.”
That didn’t seem to be the case for the Jazz, who had already had a strong showing on the first night of the draft with their two first-round picks.
Utah selected Colorado forward Cody Williams with the No. 10 overall pick and then used its second pick in the first round to take USC point guard Isaiah Collier.