The name came from a basketball game his mother was watching on television. In 1995, Debbie Jones watched UCLA’s Tyus Edney race the length of the court and hit a buzzer-beater against Missouri. A year later, she named her second son Tyus. She was a point guard herself — she’d led Devils Lake High School to the North Dakota state championship in 1981. She knew what she was watching. She knew what she wanted her boy to become.
The basketball bloodline runs deep. Father Rob Jones, 6-6, played at Division III Wisconsin-Parkside. Aunt Darcy Cascaes won two state titles at Devils Lake. Uncle Al Nuness captained the Minnesota Gophers in the 1960s. Older half-brother Jadee played at Furman and Mankato State. Younger brother Tre would follow Tyus to Duke and now plays for the Chicago Bulls. ‘It’s kind of in the blood, I guess you could say.’ Grandma eventually got tired of hearing about nothing but basketball at family gatherings.
Rob and Debbie divorced. Debbie raised the boys as a single mother in Apple Valley, Minnesota — a Twin Cities suburb of 50,000 with no basketball tradition. She worked as a paralegal. She used her vacation days to travel with Tyus and Tre to tournaments across the country. ‘All the time we’ve spent, all the money, all the days off work, all the early mornings … it’s just so worth it.’
In eighth grade — not yet enrolled at Apple Valley High — Tyus was named the varsity starting point guard. ‘He was the best point guard at our school, and he wasn’t even at our school.’ Over five years: first-ever state championship, Minnesota Mr. Basketball, 3x AP Player of the Year, 3x Gatorade POY, McDonald’s All-American. Before Tyus, if you typed ‘Apple Valley’ into Google, it showed California. After Tyus, it showed Minnesota.
He’d been friends with Jahlil Okafor since age eight through AAU. They committed to Duke together as a package deal. Something his family told him again and again became his mantra: ‘Tyus, you have to write your own story.’