Road to Duke
Dereck Jerome Lively II was born February 12, 2004, in Philadelphia. His mother, Kathy Phillips Drysdale, was a 6-4 standout at Penn State (1988–92): 1,295 points, 717 rebounds, 89 blocks, part of the Lady Lions team that reached #1 in the AP poll in 1991. She spent 13 years with the Philadelphia 76ers in game operations. His father, Dereck Sr., was a Philadelphia-born chef — boisterous, funny, full of life. But he battled drug addiction.
In 2011, Kathy moved the family to Bellefonte, PA, near State College, for a marketing role at Penn State. On January 5, 2012, five weeks before Dereck’s eighth birthday, his father died of an overdose. The boy walked to the stairs and peered down. He saw his father on the floor, black and blue, lifeless.
Not long after, Kathy told her nine-year-old she had Hodgkin’s lymphoma. She would fight it for eleven years — through chemotherapy, a stem cell transplant, a brief remission — while coaching her son in AAU ball, driving to every tournament, and working full-time at Penn State.
A HoopGroup event gave Dereck his first exposure. Team Final (Nike EYBL) recruited him. Kathy found a documentary called We Town about Westtown School’s basketball program (Mo Bamba, Cam Reddish) and made him watch it. He agreed to attend the boarding school three hours from home. An ankle injury cost him freshman year. COVID sent him back to Bellefonte, where he worked out daily at the local YMCA with his mother, adding muscle and an outside shot. When he returned, Kathy didn’t recognize him.
Senior year: #1 recruit nationally (ESPN 100). 14 PPG/14 RPG/4.5 BPG. PAISAA state championship. McDonald’s All-American. PA Gatorade POY. Chose Duke over Kentucky, Michigan, and his mother’s Penn State.
At Duke
Lively arrived at Duke for the 2022–23 season as the headliner of a number-one nationally ranked recruiting class. The expectations were enormous. And then the season started, and the stat line looked nothing like what people expected from the top recruit in America. He averaged 5.2 points per game. He started 24 of 34 games. The box score was quiet. But the impact was deafening.
What Lively did at Duke was not about scoring. It was about everything else. He led all Division I freshmen with 82 blocks. He shot 65.8 percent from the field — second-best on the team — because every shot he took was at the rim, and he finished with the touch his mother had taught him on those post-move drills in Altoona. He averaged 5.4 rebounds and 1.1 assists. He was named to the ACC All-Freshman Team and the ACC All-Defensive Team. His 7-foot-7 wingspan made him a nightmare for anyone trying to attack the basket.
Coach Jon Scheyer saw what the box score couldn’t capture. Lively was the defensive anchor who allowed Duke’s perimeter players to gamble. He was the lob threat who made pick-and-roll coverage impossible. He was the communicator who organized the back line of the defense. In the ACC Tournament, Lively helped Duke win the championship. During March Madness, his averages rose to 5.8 points, 7.4 rebounds, 3.0 blocks, and 1.6 assists on 76.5 percent shooting. The deeper the tournament went, the bigger he played. Scheyer would later tell CBS Sports the summary of what Lively meant: he was the most impactful defensive player in the country by the end of the season.
Lively declared for the 2023 NBA Draft after one season. He had come to Duke to prepare for the professional game, and the preparation was complete. The raw numbers didn’t scream stardom. But every coach and scout who watched the tape understood what they were looking at: a 7-foot-1 center with a 7-foot-7 wingspan, elite rim protection, a 65 percent shooting touch, and the kind of basketball IQ that comes from being coached by a Penn State point-scorer since the sixth grade.
After Duke
The Dallas Mavericks selected Dereck Lively II with the 12th overall pick in the 2023 NBA Draft. The pick itself was the product of an organizational gamble: Dallas had tanked the final games of the previous season to protect a first-round pick they owed New York, drawing a $750,000 fine from the league. The payoff was Lively. Luka Doncic, who had been overruled when he wanted to keep playing, quickly fell in love with his new center. The smile that lit up Doncic’s face whenever he talked about Lively told the story. After years of searching, the perennial MVP candidate finally had his lob threat and rim protector.
Lively’s rookie season: 55 games, 42 starts, 8.8 points, 6.9 rebounds, 1.4 blocks per game on a staggering 74.7 percent shooting — which would have led the entire NBA had he qualified for the league leaders. He was named to the All-Rookie Second Team. Tyson Chandler, the former Mavericks champion and Defensive Player of the Year, worked with Lively at practices throughout the season and marveled at how quickly the rookie grasped the dirty-work details that had taken Chandler years to learn. Dallas’s defensive rating jumped from 21st to 6th in the NBA. Lively was a primary reason why.
His mother was there. Kathy Drysdale had left her position at Penn State in November 2023 and moved to Dallas to be with her son during his first NBA season. She sat behind the bench for the early games. She attended community functions. She was doing what she had always done — being present, being his biggest fan and his toughest critic. But the Hodgkin’s lymphoma that she had battled for eleven years, through chemotherapy and a stem cell transplant and a brief remission in 2022, was winning.
On April 12, 2024, Kathy Phillips Drysdale died in Dallas. She was 53 years old. She was surrounded by her son, her two sisters, and members of the Mavericks organization. She had fought the disease for eleven years — long enough to see her son walk to the edge of the stairs in Bellefonte, lose his father, learn the game in a YMCA gym, bloom at Westtown, commit to Duke, play in the ACC Tournament championship, hear his name called on draft night, and step onto an NBA court. Before she died, she left her son a message: “Dear Dereck, you made it. Persevered, but you are not done yet. You’re not even close to being done yet. I love you.”
Dereck wrote the tribute on Instagram that evening. Then he went to the arena. Jason Kidd said Lively had come to shootaround that morning to address his teammates — his second family — about his mother’s declining health, before she passed that afternoon. The Mavericks held a moment of silence. The crowd roared its support. Derrick Jones Jr. called him “lil bro” and said the team would go to bat for him any day, even though Lively was a lot taller than everyone else.
Two months later, Dereck Lively II was playing in the NBA Finals. Dallas had fought through the Western Conference playoffs — Clippers, Thunder, Timberwolves — and Lively had been magnificent. He averaged 11.5 points and 11.3 rebounds in four consecutive wins bridging the Western Conference semifinals and finals. Against Oklahoma City in the deciding Game 6, the Mavericks outscored the Thunder by 26 points when Lively was on the floor. He was the hero of that closeout game.
In the Finals against Boston, down 3–0, Dallas faced elimination in Game 4 at home. Midway through the second quarter, Luka Doncic drove into the paint, drew Jayson Tatum, and found Lively alone in the right corner. Lively hadn’t attempted a three-pointer the entire postseason. He hadn’t attempted one since November. He had taken only 13 in his entire Duke career. He caught the pass, dipped it below his knees, rose, and launched a gorgeous arching moonshot that splashed through nothing but net. The arena erupted. Dallas never trailed again, winning 122–84 in the third-biggest blowout in NBA Finals history. Lively finished with 11 points and 12 rebounds — his second straight double-double in the Finals, making him the first rookie to accomplish that since Magic Johnson in 1980.
After the game, a reporter asked about the three-pointer. Lively’s answer was simple. His mother helped him make it. She was going to help him make a lot more. She helped him make the free throws. She helped him make the reads. She was above him, and she was guiding the ball.
Boston won the series in five games. But Lively’s rookie postseason — 21 games, 7.9 points, 7.4 rebounds, played with a poise and soul of someone much older — announced that Dallas had found its center for the next decade.
Where Is He Now
Dereck Lively II is 21 years old. He plays for the Dallas Mavericks. In his second NBA season, 2024–25, he started 25 of 32 games and averaged 9.1 points, 7.8 rebounds, and 2.6 assists before a stress fracture in his right ankle in January 2025 shut him down for several months. In December 2025, he underwent foot surgery and was ruled out for the remainder of the season. The injuries are the kind of setback that tests a young big man’s patience. Lively has been tested before.
He is an only child. His father died when he was seven. His mother was diagnosed with cancer when he was nine. She fought it through his entire childhood, his high school career, his year at Duke, and his first months in the NBA. She moved to Dallas to watch him play, and she died two months before he played in the NBA Finals. He wore a jersey with her name on it. The Mavericks honored her with a moment of silence. Luka Doncic posted a tribute. Kyrie Irving shared the video. The whole organization embraced the kid from Bellefonte whose mother had scored 1,295 points at Penn State and coached him in a YMCA gym while undergoing chemotherapy.
Kathy Drysdale is survived by her son, her mother Judy Phillips, and her sisters Lisa Parker and Pattie Gardner. She left Penn State in November 2023 after more than a decade of service — marketing manager for women’s volleyball, wrestling, and softball, Director of Fan Experience, a presence who left her mark on nearly every sport in the department. Her former coach at Penn State, Carolyn Kieger, called her one of the legends who put sacrifice and energy into making the program what it is today. Her friends said she approached cancer the way she approached a game: black and white, game plan, no doubt she was going to win. For eleven years, she did.
Dereck Lively II grew up in Bellefonte, Pennsylvania, a town most people have never heard of. He was born in Philadelphia. He lost his father at seven. He lost his mother at twenty. He was coached by the toughest coach he ever had — and the first. He watched a documentary about Westtown School on Amazon because his mother told him to sit down and watch it. He went to the YMCA every day during COVID because she said three-dimensional players work on their outside shot. He chose Duke over her Penn State because the Brotherhood was the right fit, and she understood. He blocked 82 shots as a freshman. He was drafted 12th. He made the NBA Finals as a rookie. He hit a three-pointer he had no business taking because he felt his mother guide it through the rim.
The Mavericks’ official statement after Kathy’s death said it best: so much of Kathy — her strength, tenacity, and joy — is reflected in her son. Every game Dereck Lively II plays is a game played for two. His mother knew he’d made it. She told him so. She also told him he wasn’t even close to being done yet. He’s not. He’s twenty-one years old, and there are so many more three-pointers to guide through the rim.