Tristan Maxwell, son of NBA’s Vernon, making his own name at North Mecklenburg
Tristan Maxwell has carried a last name that means something in basketball his entire life.
Now the North Mecklenburg senior high school star — and soon-to-be Georgia Tech shooting guard — is on the verge of winning his own title while trying to make his own name.
With his NBA champion of a father, Vernon Maxwell, seated on the front row, Tristan Maxwell helped lead the Vikings to an 86-78 win over Olympic on Saturday to win the 4A Western Regional final.
Tristan Maxwell didn’t shoot particularly well Saturday — he was 6-for-21 on his way to 18 points. But he grabbed a couple of big rebounds late to tamp down an Olympic comeback, finishing with eight boards and five assists.
“I’d give him probably about a C-plus,” Vernon Maxwell said afterward about his son’s performance. “I’m a tough grader. But at the end of the day, he got the win and that’s all he wanted. He’s going to the championship game.”
This Western final was a game with big stakes for Tristan Maxwell. His future coach, Georgia Tech’s Josh Pastner, was in the crowd along with about 3,000 other people shoehorned into Lenoir-Rhyne’s Shuford Gym. Maxwell was facing off against Olympic’s Josh Banks, also a top recruit who has signed to play for Virginia Commonwealth. The two guarded each other numerous times during the afternoon, and each played well defensively but struggled shooting the ball. Banks went only 5-for-23 and scored 19 points.
Maxwell is a smart player. After the 6-3 guard picked up his third foul late in the first half, he never drew another, despite playing the entire second half. He also benefited from North Meck’s edge in overall talent. North Meck (30-1) is nationally ranked and will be a solid favorite in the championship game Saturday at 7:35 p.m. against Lumberton in the Smith Center at Chapel Hill.
Tristan Maxwell said he was nervous before this one.
“I couldn’t even sleep,” Maxwell said. “I was just thinking: ‘Wow, I’m in the final four.’ ”
North Mecklenburg hasn’t made it to the state championship game since 2006. In 2019, Maxwell scored 45 points in a third-round high school playoff game, but an injury-depleted North Mecklenburg team still lost to Winston-Salem Reynolds.
This team doesn’t need Maxwell to score anywhere near that many to win. Fellow senior guards Trayden Williams (25 points) and Shamann Artis (17 points) had fine games against Olympic, too, and sophomore forward Jeremy Gregory looked like a high-major D-1 recruit.
Vernon Maxwell had a 13-year NBA career for eight different teams, including a 31-game stint with the Charlotte Hornets in the late 1990s. Nicknamed “Mad Max,” Maxwell was a streaky shooter who once scored 30 points in a single NBA quarter and played on a couple of NBA championship teams with the Houston Rockets. He also showed questionable judgment at times, once walking into the stands during an NBA game to punch a heckling fan.
Vernon Maxwell has never been Tristan’s official head coach at any level — “don’t have the patience for it,” he said. But he has trained him for the past 15 years in Charlotte and has pushed his son hard.
“It took a lot of cussin’ and fussin’ to get him where he’s at today,” Vernon Maxwell said. “I’m so proud of him. I know I was tough. I don’t think I could have (done) it, but I made him do it.”
While Vernon Maxwell was known primarily as a shooter, his son has become a very versatile player for North Meck.
Said North Meck coach Duane Lewis: “Tristan is more than a scorer. He can rebound. He can defend. ... He was a little skinny ninth-grader. As a 10th-grader, he was emotional. ... He understands it’s about the team. And he’s so strong and thick he can really defend.”
Tristan Maxwell also handles the ball well enough to play point guard when he needs to. At Georgia Tech, he will likely need to work on his athleticism, according to his father.
“He needs to get his body right,” Vernon Maxwell said. “His strength is he’s got a real high IQ when he plays the game. … He’s about 6-3 1/2 and about 200 pounds, so (he will be) trying to get his weight down a little bit when he gets to college. I think he’s going to be a lot better athlete and a lot better player, too.”
For now, though, Tristan Maxwell still has one game left in his high school career. And he wants to end it as a champion.
This story was originally published March 7, 2020 at 3:52 PM.
