Why this Ga. Tech basketball signee gets aggravated when compared to his dad, an NBA champ
North Mecklenburg High’s Tristan Maxwell said having a father who’s a famous basketball player can get a little “aggravating” at times.
Maxwell’s father, Vernon, who won an NBA title with the Houston Rockets in 1994, played in the league for 13 years, from 1988-2001. Nicknamed “Mad Max,” the elder Maxwell played for eight NBA teams, including the Hornets during the 1997-98 season.
Today, most anywhere Maxwell plays, he said, everyone knows who his dad is and wants to compare the two.
“Sometimes it does get aggravating,” the Georgia Tech signee told the Observer. “But I just try to not think about it too much. Some people don’t like my game. I don’t know why.”
Then he smiled.
“It’s just some people,” he said, “not a lot of people.”
N.C. recruiting analyst Rick Lewis said there’s not much to dislike about Maxwell, a 6-2, 190-pound shooting guard and a top 20 scorer in North Carolina. Maxwell is averaging 24.6 points and six rebounds per game for North Mecklenburg (19-1), the No. 1 team in the Charlotte Observer’s Sweet 16 poll.
“He’s an effortless scorer,” said Lewis, who ranks Maxwell No. 8 overall among N.C. seniors. “You go watch him play and it doesn’t look like he’s scoring a lot of points. You look in the box score and he’s in the 20s.”
Vernon Maxwell ‘a real hard coach’
Maxwell, signed to Georgia Tech, does a lot of his work, like his father did, from the outside. He credits his dad with teaching him how to shoot and making him work continuously on his game.
“He’s a real hard coach,” Tristan said, “and he did some wild stuff, but he got me to where I’m at right now. It was getting on me and telling me I needed to be in the gym every day. He taught me everything I know, all the mechanics to (my) jump shot.”
That work has turned Maxwell into a high-major recruit, and as he heads into his final weeks as a high school basketball player, Maxwell, a senior, said he has one goal — to bring a title back to North Mecklenburg, which hasn’t won a championship in 15 years..
“We can be as good as we want to be,” Maxwell said. “We’ve just got to play hard. ... I’m ready for it all really. I’m going to do me and not try to let anybody get in my head and stay humble.”
This story was originally published February 3, 2020 at 5:00 AM.
