He has NBA genes. But at Winthrop, Claxton will do what his brother and dad didn’t
When he and his Winthrop team step onto the Farmers Coliseum floor in Indianapolis for the first round of the 2021 NCAA tournament, sophomore Chase Claxton will have done something no one from his accomplished basketball family had ever done before.
And, like any gracious son would, he’ll remind them of that.
On Friday night, Claxton will be the first in his family to participate in March Madness. And that’s a big deal considering his pedigree: His brother, Nicolas, is a University of Georgia basketball alum and a rising star for the Brooklyn Nets — one with a perimeter defending ability that seems to run in the family. And his father, Charles, also played for Georgia and had a stint in the NBA. He was drafted by the Phoenix Suns in 1994.
“I’m gonna be honest, it feels so good,” Chase told The Herald last week in a phone interview, laughing. “I mean, I said the same thing last year before it got canceled. I called them and was like, ‘Oh, yeah, I’m the first one in the NCAA tournament, how does that feel?!’ And of course they just laughed.
“But I’m gonna wait until we actually get there this time. I’m not saying anything too early.”
Chase, a 6-foot-7, 185-pound reserve forward for No. 12 seed Winthrop, was voted second in Big South Defensive Player of the Year voting this year. His season averages of 4.2 points and 3.6 rebounds a game don’t reflect the impact he has had on this year’s team — largely because taking charges and diving for loose balls are rarely reflected in end-of-game box scores.
Case in point: Head coach Pat Kelsey, after a win on the road versus Big South foe Campbell last year, said Claxton’s work ethic is a “talent” in itself.
“I’m going to tell you right now, Chase Claxton emptied the stinkin’ tank during his minutes in the second half,” Kelsey said after that game. “You look at his line, there ain’t nothing on there that’s pretty. … But he affected the game with his energy.”
‘I knew absolutely nothing’
Chase never felt pressured to play basketball, he said. He remembers it just always being around him — it always being on the TV and it being his favorite thing to do with his brother, who is only 26 months older than him.
And his dad admits that was on purpose.
“Well, we kind of brainwashed them a little bit,” Chase’s father, Charles, told The Herald earlier this week, “because, you know, I knew I wanted them to play basketball, but I couldn’t force them to play. We introduced it at an early age, and they found a love for it. And, of course, we’re elated that they’re very successful at what they’re doing. And that they have fun.”
You’d think that Chase — the heir of a basketball star with a particularly interesting path, one that began with Charles rising to notoriety in the Virgin Islands before his talent took him to Miami and then Georgia and so on — would’ve spent his childhood listening to his dad regale him with stories.
But that’s not what happened.
“My friends always get on me about this, but I didn’t know as much about my family or my parents as I probably needed to,” Chase said and chuckled. “In high school, they would ask, and I knew just absolutely nothing. … He moved to the Miami area, and that’s when he started getting recruited by Georgia. And then he chose between UNLV and Georgia. And like, stuff like that I never knew. Which is really crazy to me because I can take so much from those experiences.”
Chase said he ponders the question himself sometimes: “Why didn’t I want to know this?”
Chase and Nic Claxton are different
In Chase’s defense, in high school he was a teenager who, between his NBA veteran pops and his NBA-bound brother, was getting compared to members of his family a lot. Particularly so with his older brother.
Chase and Nic attended Legacy Early College in Greenville together. When Chase was in 10th grade, he was on the Legacy varsity team while Nic, then a senior, was on the school’s national team.
The comparisons were understandable but a bit strange to Chase. He and his brother have always been close, and they still talk every day, Chase said — but they’ve also always been different.
Off the court, Nic is the life of the party, while Chase doesn’t have a problem with attention but loves “going under the radar.” Nic is more spontaneous, too, while Chase more so craves routine. (Well, “craves routine” is a bit of an understatement, his mom, Nicole, said. Chase is such a creature of habit that it shows in the snacks he eats — a tight rotation of Cinnamon Toast Crunch, Rice Krispie Treats and apple cinnamon oatmeal: “He just recently started taking a liking to broccoli,” Nicole said, adding, “That could seem small to some people, but to Chase, that’s huge.”)
Chase admits he and his brother are a bit more similar on the court than off it. But differences remain. The biggest ones? Nic is 6-foot-11, is more of a scorer and had a Division I basketball work ethic from a young age. Chase — a bit smaller and someone who’s more likely to dominate a game on defense than on offense — admits that he relied a lot on his “natural” gifts until he truly fell in love with the game his senior year of high school.
Around that time was when Chase started to welcome his family comparisons, he said.
“My senior year in high school, freshman year of college, I started to learn to embrace it,” Chase said. “Because that’s my brother, and he’s very, very successful. That’s my dad, and he was very, very successful. There’s no reason to get mad or frustrated about somebody wanting me to live up to their name or to their hype. But at the same time, I just also know that within myself, I’m my own person, and I’m unique (in the family).
“I’ll just continue to be my own person and continue to make it my own way.”
Claxton can soar at Winthrop
At Winthrop, Chase has blossomed.
He started his first game as a freshman, and though he’s coming off the bench this year, he’s playing about the same amount of minutes (just less than 20 a game) as he did last year — and his impact has arguably increased.
He also found a new, deeper love for basketball at Winthrop. He realized how deep that love was when he started watching film and taking notes on a Google doc and talking with “defensive genius” assistant coach Brian Kloman about opposing teams’ scouting reports “for fun.”
And when things weren’t going well — like when, after his first workout, Chase looked around the gym and thought he might have to redshirt that season because of the talent around him? Chase had his brother to turn to for advice.
“That freshman wall that everybody talks about, I always tell people that I never hit it, but thinking about it, my freshman wall was probably the very first day, week, month, that I was here,” he said. “I was really struggling until I was just talking to my brother and stuff like that, and he assured me that it’s natural.”
Nic told his younger brother that “eventually something was going to click.” And it soon did.
“Last season, the starting lineup was based on the defensive grading,” Chase said. “So I was like, ‘Huh, the people behind me, I don’t know. Should they be playing more than me? Do I deserve this? Do I really deserve this spot?’ ”
He added: “It wasn’t until after the Fresno State game that I really felt like I belonged,” Chase said, adding that that was the game he realized that he could do the same things on a college court as he once could on a high school court. “Like, after that game, I didn’t question it ever again.”
Chase entering NCAA tournament
Nicole and Charles will be in Indianapolis to watch Chase play Villanova on Friday. Nic will play on the same night, when the Nets play the Magic, but the parents are used to that multitasking: With their youngest child and only daughter, Carmen (who’s 14 years old and 6-foot) just starting to get into basketball, the Claxton parents have become adept at watching one game in person and huddling around an iPad to watch another one from afar.
But Chase’s parents couldn’t miss being there for the NCAA tournament this year. Chase is making family history, after all.
Said Charles: “You always want your kids to do better than you and accomplish more than you have. So we’re very, very proud of him.”
NCAA tournament: Villanova vs. Winthrop info
Who: No. 5 Villanova (16-6) vs. No. 12 Winthrop (23-1)
Region: South
Game location: Farmers Coliseum in Indianapolis
When: 9:57 p.m. Friday
TV: TNT
This story was originally published March 18, 2021 at 6:02 AM.
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