Cade and Hunter Tyson, a pair of 6-foot-7 brothers, have reached some impressive heights on a wide variety of basketball courts.
Cade is having a strong start to his senior season with the Gophers men’s basketball team; the transfer wing leads the Big Ten Conference in scoring through six games. His older brother Hunter surged in his last year at Clemson and became a second-round pick in the 2023 NBA draft; the small forward now comes off the bench for the Denver Nuggets.
Yet a piece of both wishes they were just kids again, playing one-on-one in North Carolina.
Their first hoop was nothing more than iron rim fastened to a five-foot wooden post stuck out in their grass yard. No frills, not even a backboard. “Very Carolina of us,” Hunter recalled.
When in elementary school, the boys, along with their sister Laikyn, received a quality half-court set-up, complete with glass backboard and a big, flat concrete slab. At the time, it was a world-class court.
“I wish I could get that time back,” Cade told the Pioneer Press while on his new home court, Williams Arena, in October.
“Looking back, I miss those days, man,” Hunter said before a Timberwolves-Nuggets game at Target Center in November.
While they fondly look back on their youth, it sounded like combat training.
“Fouling the heck out of each other,” Hunter recalled.
Their father Jonathan served as referee. Well, sort of. “I would use that terminology lightly,” he said in an interview. “I would just keep them from hurting each other. I would let them pretty much go at it.”
Through the fog of time, Cade, who is three years younger, remembers it being a bit more one-sided.
“My brother liked to throw some elbows in the paint a little bit,” he said. “… But looking back, it made me tougher.”
Cade has needed that durability.
When Hunter was getting his first taste as an NBA rookie in 2023-24, Cade was riding high in his sophomore season at Belmont, shooting 46% from 3-point range and averaging 16.2 points a game.
With a big frame and smooth shooting stroke, Cade was highly ranked target in the NCAA transfer portal that spring and picked traditional powerhouse North Carolina.
Growing up south of Charlotte in the town of Monroe, Hunter was a Tar Heels fan, while Cade said he didn’t have a “dream school.” UNC did have an influence on him, however, as a family photo shows Cade decked out in Carolina blue while playing on that concrete slab.
But last season in Chapel Hill was a struggle for Cade: He played only eight minutes per game, 29% from deep and averaged 2.6 points across 31 contests.
“We tried to keep him from getting discouraged,” Jonathan said. “There were times where he was discouraged. I mean, I’d be lying if I didn’t say we were all discouraged.”
But Jonathan tried to remind Cade of what he could control, showing up to work every day. One message: “The biggest thing you need to understand is (UNC guard) Seth Trimble is one of the best defenders in the country. You’re practicing against him every single day. … You need to develop your offensive game.”
Cade hit the transfer portal again and landed at Minnesota. While it’s only a small sample size, his 21.3 points-per-game average sits No. 1 in the Big Ten and 14th in the nation going into games Wednesday night. He is showing signs of being a three-way scorer: from behind the arc, at the rim and from the foul line.
Tyson can continue to build on that hot start when Minnesota (4-2) plays Stanford (4-1) in the Acrisure Series at 8:30 p.m. Thursday in Palm Desert, Calif.
Gophers head coach Niko Medved knows what a competitive household looks like; he had two younger brothers while growing up in Roseville.
“It’s wanting to beat your brothers more than anything,” Medved said. “I think for Cade, being in those (younger brother) shoes really, really helped him grow. Cade has an unbelievable work ethic and he’s very competitive, but he’s also got great discipline.”
The Gophers honored Tyson for scoring 1,000 career points before the 7 p.m. tipoff against Chicago State on Nov. 18, and Tyson showed his commitment by being one of the first players onto The Barn court before 5 p.m.
“He obviously built great habits growing up,” Medved said. “His dad was a coach. His brother was a terrific player. It’s been in his blood and in his culture. … I think so many of those habits have been ingrained in him. He’s just so fun to coach every day.”
Jonathan Tyson played at Wingate and his coaching career led to plenty of gym access for his kids. They also attended a variety of games, from high school to college and to the Charlotte Hornets.
But letting ’em play on that variety of courts was primarily about having them “figure it out. Developing the competitive spirit was really the big idea.”
Jonathan now serves as the Chief of School Performance for the Union County Public Schools, a district with 53 schools and 41,000 students. He also wanted his children, including high school volleyball player Laikyn, to gain the nuances of sports.
“Soft skills that they could learn, being a good teammate, working with others, by being competitive, by practicing and preparing to be your personal best,” Jonathan said.
The NBA was not the goal for his sons. They also played baseball growing up and didn’t start playing hoops on the traveling circuit at young ages.
“I was just hoping (Hunter would) get an opportunity to go to college,” Jonathan said. “And to be quite candid, help us financially, so he could go to college (on scholarship), so neither he nor I nor our family would be in a great deal of debt.”
When Cade struggled at UNC last season, his NBA older bro was there to help.
“It was a tough year for him last year, but (it was) the way he worked super hard this summer,” Hunter said. “Last year, (I was) just trying to encourage him. He always kept his faith and kept working hard and just knew it was a short storm that he would eventually get out of.”
Mother Torri said her boys were competitive off the court, too, including in the Chutes and Ladders board game. But while Jonathan was “definitely pretty tough” on the boys, Torri would be there to “remind them of the softer side.”
“We are so blessed,” Torri said. “It’s not just all the success that you see, but all the stuff people don’t see. The ugliness of social media can be pretty hard, so seeing them overcome that in the mental aspect of the game. That is what I’m more proud of.”
Pioneer Press reporter Jace Frederick contributed to this story.
Related Articles
Men’s basketball: Gophers’ free-throw struggles prove costly in loss to San Francisco
Gophers center Robert Vaihola unlikely to play against San Francisco
Gophers avoid scary upset in 66-54 win over Chicago State
Gophers men’s basketball: Minnesota struggles, but escapes with OT win over Green Bay
Gophers can’t keep up with Missouri in a 83-60 loss
