Who Is Maria Harper? Dylan Harper's Mom Breaks the Internet with Her Stunning Appearance at Son's 2025 NBA Draft
Dylan Harper's mother stole the show on Wednesday night. After the former Rutgers standout was selected by the San Antonio Spurs as the No. 2 overall pick in the 2025 NBA Draft, social media was set ablaze as Maria Harper joined Dylan and his older brother, Ron Jr., for a post-draft interview with ESPN's Monica McNutt.
Viewers were captivated by her striking presence. What caught many off guard was that Maria accompanied her son on camera, while his father — five-time NBA champion Ron Harper — remained seated in the audience. However, on Tuesday, Dylan explained that it made perfect sense: his mother had been his toughest motivator throughout his basketball journey.
Right Person to Join Son
In fact, Maria coached him all the way from first grade through the end of high school — a meaningful experience they both cherished. "His flat-out love for the game, his determination, hard work and humility, day in and day out," an emotional Maria told ESPN when asked about what had led her son to the NBA.
Her brief appearance on TV sparked a frenzy among basketball fans, with thousands flooding social media in awe.
"Dylan Harper's mom is top notch," one viewer wrote on X, while another said: "Dylan Harper's mom is about to go viral man."
"Respectfully Dylan Harper's mom is an absolute smoke show," wrote another fan.
Maria, who is of Filipino descent, moved to the United States when she was just 7 years old and was raised in Paterson, New Jersey.
While Harper is the son of former Los Angeles Lakers star Ron Harper, it's his mother who has played a pivotal role in his journey to the NBA.
Maria coached Dylan during his childhood and has a basketball background of her own, having played Division I hoops at the University of New Orleans.
Maria and Ron first met in 1998 and married in 2005. They became parents to Ron Jr. in 2000 and welcomed their second son, Dylan, in 2006.
Perfect Idol
Maria Pizarro, now 50, and Ron Harper ended their marriage in 2012 after seven years together. They share three children, including Dylan and a daughter. In a 2023 interview with The Athletic, Maria spoke openly about the major impact she had on his development, both on and off the court.
"I'm not big on girlfriends or house parties," she said. "We get up, we go to school, we have our activity, whether it's basketball or it's dance, we get our homework done, and that's about it. That's the tone that I set in the household."
She said of her son's abilities: "What makes him good is that he's a Swiss army knife. He sees the floor like an eagle. He knows how to get his teammates involved.
"He's a very capable scorer if you need him to be, but because he has a point guard mentality, he wants his teammates to succeed, even before himself."
Harper is set to join up with Victor Wembanyama and his new teammates following a challenging year for the Spurs.
San Antonio ended the season ranked 13th in the Western Conference, posting a 34-48 record. The team also faced difficulties when their iconic head coach, Gregg Popovich, had to temporarily step away after suffering a stroke midway through the season.
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Straits Times
4 hours ago
- Straits Times
How social media videos fueled Zohran Mamdani's success
NEW YORK - As a millennial politician, Mr Zohran Mamdani is a digital native, at ease on both sides of a camera and well versed in the slangy 'terminally online' lingo of those with active social media accounts. He is also the son of an Oscar-nominated filmmaker, with a sharp eye for aesthetics and moving images. So it is perhaps not surprising that Mr Mamdani's campaign for mayor of New York City has relied heavily on engaging social media posts. But during the Democratic primary, his high-energy videos also inspired his supporters to create their own clips, which encouraged others to respond with even more videos. Before long, Mr Mamdani, a 33-year-old Assembly member, was not just a politician. He was a vibe. He was a meme. Among the factors in Mr Mamdani's stunning lead in the primary last week was his ability to translate his campaign message about making New York City more affordable to TikTok and Instagram, where clips by and about him had been going viral for months. He was on the internet talk shows Subway Takes and Gaydar. Comedians Ilana Glazer, Marybeth Barone and Sarah Sherman made videos asking voters to rank Mr Mamdani first on their primary ballots. There were clips that used NBA highlights to explain his campaign. And a video in which he spelled his name, M-a-m-d-a-n-i, set to the track 'Hollaback Girl' by Gwen Stefani. There was even a clip set to a Japanese pop song in the style of a 'fansub,' a phenomenon that only the extremely online would understand. The more Mr Mamdani posted, the more people posted about him, and soon, whether or not you were following the mayoral race, there were Mr Mamdani videos in your feed. Former New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, who had spent months as the perceived front-runner in the Democratic primary before Mr Mamdani outpaced him, derided his social media popularity during a debate this month. 'Mr Mamdani is very good at videos, but not reality,' he said, criticizing his rival as inexperienced and his policy proposals as impractical. New York Mayor Eric Adams, who is running in the general election as an independent, also discounted Mr Mamdani's social media strategy, without naming him. 'Let's be clear: They have a record of tweets,' Mr Adams said at the launch of his general election campaign last week. 'I have a record on the streets.' It is impossible to say how many of the Mr Mamdani videos actually translated into votes. But especially for some of the city's youngest voters, who get much of their information from social media, the campaign appeared to resonate. Mr Mamdani's videos explained his plans for a rent freeze, free bus service and free child care in simple terms, propelling him swiftly from relative obscurity as a state lawmaker to a household name. Videos created by his supporters found broad audiences. Ms Oladoyin Ogunsola, a 22-year-old artist and content creator, said she found herself inspired. She posted a 12-second video of herself on TikTok, leaning out of a cab window, eyes closed, followed by quick clips of the subway, Times Square and the Metropolitan Museum of Art. The caption? 'I'm ranking Zohran first because I deserve the opportunity to build a life in the city that raised me.' The video has had more than 30,000 views. Ms Ogunsola, who often posts about herself and her life in New York, said she connected to Mr Mamdani as a fellow child of immigrants raised in Queens. She said she was not contacted by or paid by his team to create the video. 'It's hard to manufacture something like this, for real,' she said. Ms Vivien Maskara, 19, seized an opportunity to make a Mr Mamdani video after an in-person encounter in Queens' Sunnyside neighborhood. The candidate was in her neighborhood for a campaign event, and she asked if he would make a video with her. 'I didn't want a photo,' she said. 'I wanted a TikTok.' Ms Maskara used a popular TikTok meme, 'I'm passing the phone to –,' that comes with built-in suspense; viewers don't know where the phone will land. 'I'm passing the phone to our future mayor,' Ms Maskara said in the video. Mr Mamdani accepted the handoff with a smile and quickly urged viewers to vote 'for a city that every New Yorker can afford.' Ms Maskara's 10-second clip quickly reached over 500,000 views. 'I think he's really changed campaigning,' she said. One TikTok user who lives in Brooklyn created a Ms Mamdani video that doubled as dating advice. 'If you're going on any first dates in the next couple of weeks,' the woman said to the camera, 'the first thing you should ask is: 'Are you ranking Zohran No. 1 in the mayoral primary?'' The 25-year-old creator, who did not wish to be identified by her real name, also made a clip directed at Jack Schlossberg, whose cousin Kerry Kennedy was previously married to Cuomo. 'Are you ranking Zohran?' she asked. 'I hope you're not ranking Cuomo.' That video got more than 100,000 views. Ten days later, Mr Schlossberg, the grandson of President John F. Kennedy, posted a photo of Mr Mamdani on his Instagram account, and the woman responded with another clip. 'We did it!' she said. 'Cyberbullying works, you guys.' Ms Isabela Buitrago, a 23-year-old content curator born and raised in Jackson Heights, first learned about Mr Mamdani on social media. Once she started following him, the algorithm served her more and more Mr Mamdani. 'The short videos were great because, you know, Gen Z, our attention span sucks,' she said. Ms Buitrago, who posts information for the queer and Latina community in New York City, has almost 20,000 followers on TikTok and almost 35,000 on Instagram. She emailed Mamdani's campaign team and said she wanted to share his message with her followers. His team set up a brief walk-and-talk with Mr Mamdani on the day he campaigned on foot from Inwood to Battery Park. A 26-second snippet of her interview, titled 'How New York is Zohran?!,' has had more than 300,000 views. Helping a political campaign by creating videos doesn't necessarily require an enormous expenditure of time. Shortly before the primary, Ms Charlene Kaye, 38, a New York City-based musician and comedian who creates funny songs about pop culture, posted a clip of herself playing a keyboard and singing a catchy song with the hook 'Everybody rank Zohran.' She said she penned the tune in five minutes – and it has been shared more than 1,000 times. 'I just think that our forefathers would have wanted grassroots change to start with the musical comedians of Brooklyn,' she said. Ms Kaye noted that although many other politicians try to reach younger generations with social media videos, it does not always work. 'You have to have impeccable rizz – and not everybody has that,' she said. Ms Allie O'Brien, a political content creator with more than 600,000 followers on TikTok, was not surprised that Mamdani's particular online persona caught fire. 'Not only is he young and charismatic and clearly enough of a digital native that he and his team have a really good sense of how to perform well online,' she said, 'but his social media strategy backed up a really objectively popular campaign.' Ms O'Brien often works with people she calls 'fancy elected officials' who don't take social media videos seriously. 'They think, if we make jokes from time to time, if we do something relatable, people will fall in line and will love us. And it's really not always the case,' she said. She suggested that Mr Mamdani's appeal, even to people in other states, who can't vote for him, is a result of the ear-to-ear smiling positivity emanating from his videos. Proving her point: Mr Mamdani appears in a dreamy montage set to the Addison Rae track 'New York,' created by a TikTok user with the screen name fleuririva. Her account has only 19 followers, but the video featuring Mr Mamdani has had more than 38,000 views. Reached by phone, the user behind the account, who did not wish to be identified by her real name, said she did not vote for Mr Mamdani – because she lives in Virginia. But, she said, what Mr Mamdani stands for 'is inspiring to a lot of the younger generation.' Asked if she was paid by Mr Mamdani's campaign to make the video, she laughed. 'No,' she said. 'I, like, literally just graduated high school.' NYTIMES Join ST's Telegram channel and get the latest breaking news delivered to you.
Straits Times
14 hours ago
- Straits Times
Krejcikova relishing return as Wimbledon champion despite injury scare
FILE PHOTO: Tennis - Eastbourne Open - Devonshire Park Lawn Tennis Club, Eastbourne, Britain - June 25, 2025 Czech Republic's Barbora Krejcikova in action during her round of 16 match against Britain's Jodie Burrage Action Images via Reuters/Paul Childs/File Photo REUTERS LONDON - Defending Wimbledon champion Barbora Krejcikova will step into the All England Club this week carrying both the weight of expectation and a lingering injury concern, yet the Czech appears utterly unfazed by either. Days after withdrawing from the Eastbourne Open with a thigh injury, Krejcikova seemed calmly assured for someone who defied the odds at Wimbledon last year when she stunned Grand Slam champions en route to the title as the 31st seed. Krejcikova has had limited preparation after a back injury sidelined her for six months, playing six matches since her return in May. "It's definitely not difficult (returning as defending champion). It's actually very, very nice to be here and very nice to play, even after all the time I was out," Krejcikova told reporters on Sunday. "So I'm enjoying it, I'm happy to be here. I find it tough, complicated, but I don't find it difficult. I'm very much looking forward to play on Tuesday. "It's basically a new tournament, even though I won it last year and I have great memories for this one. I want to come here and do well again. The preparation is the same, I've been working really hard to come back and to enjoy this position." Krejcikova's first-round opponent is Alexandra Eala, the 20-year-old Filipino who announced herself by stunning Iga Swiatek to reach the semi-finals at the Miami Open in March before reaching the Eastbourne final. "I don't really know that much about her yet because she's obviously a young player, an upcoming player and one of the players of the new generation," Krejcikova said. "But I saw some rallies, I saw some matches. I know that she was doing quite well in the first half of the year, so I'm looking forward. It's going to be a great matchup. I'm looking forward to playing her to see where the young generation is." REUTERS Join ST's Telegram channel and get the latest breaking news delivered to you.
Straits Times
15 hours ago
- Straits Times
S. Korea's Yongsan clinch NBA Rising Stars Invitational boys' title; Kyoto Seika win girls' crown
SINGAPORE – Heading into the final of the NBA Rising Stars Invitational at the Kallang Tennis Hub on June 29, Yongsan High School had not expected to beat their taller Chinese opponents Tsinghua University High School. But the South Korean side devised a strategy to overcome the height disadvantage and won 97-48 in front of the 1,100-capacity crowd to take home the title. Through an interpreter, tournament Most Valuable Player, 1.94m power forward Kim Min-gi said of their win: 'I'm incredibly happy, this is going to be a memory that's just going to be unforgettable for the rest of my life. 'The night before, we had a look at the Chinese team, and saw that they were really tall. So we built a game plan based off that to make sure that we were going to tackle them well during the game. 'And also the most important thing was to have that fight, because we had nothing to lose.' Yongsan had beaten Thailand's Assumption College Thonburi 84-28 and the Philippines' National University Nazareth School 84-79 in the round-robin group stage, before overcoming Japan's Fukuoka University Ohori Senior High School 75-65 in the semi-finals. Despite their height disadvantage in the final – Tsinghua's players had looked about half a head taller than Yongsan's – the South Korean side flew out of the blocks and finished the first quarter 30-14. Making use of their agility and precise shooting, Yongsan scored 12 three-pointers out of 21 attempts by half-time. The Chinese had looked sluggish and were not able to capture rebounds, allowing easy turnovers for their opponents. A change of tactics in the third (16-9) and fourth (19-15) periods saw Yongsan collect fewer points but they managed to see the game out 97-48. Kim, 17, who scored a match-high 25 points, added: 'This means a lot to me personally, and I've never expected something like this, and this was for sure to be great groundwork to my career in the future. 'We don't have a lot of NBA-related tournaments in Asia, and to win the MVP on top of that, I've nothing but good things to say about this tournament.' Yongsan coach Lee Sae-bum said: 'I thought it was important that this was going to be a great platform for the kids to strive for a challenge, to really go for those victories and learn a lot.' Kyoto Seika Gakuen High School's Ngalula Liya Mukuna scored a match high 30 points to help her team win the inaugural title. ST PHOTO: GIN TAY In the girls' final, Japan's Kyoto Seika Gakuen Senior High School thrashed South Korea's Onyang Girls' High School 109-40. Their dominance was prevalent throughout as Congolese centre Ngalula Liya Mukuna scored a match-high 30 points and captured 27 rebounds. She said via an interpreter: 'Early on, we were nervous as a team, but also we have strong hearts. 'We grew in confidence as the game wore on and for us, it's always about rebounding and hustling the loose ball. 'I want to keep improving, especially on my drives and shooting free throws, so I will keep working hard.' Her coach Tsunayoshi Yamamoto added: 'It was very humbling and this is actually our first time as Kyoto Seika basketball team to play outside of Japan and be involved in this kind of tournament. 'Looking at the other teams, especially Korea, China, Australia. They're tall and physical, so we weren't confident at all early on, but one game at a time, one win at a time, we raised our confidence.' The NBA Rising Stars Invitational is the league's first regional high school tournament, with the inaugural edition featuring 12 Under-18 teams in each gender category from 11 countries across Asia-Pacific. Singapore was represented by Anglo-Chinese Junior College and United World College Dover in the boys' category, but both did not make it out of the group stage. Hwa Chong Institution's girls had beaten Malaysia's Hin Hua High School 69-63 in their opening game but also did not advance to the knockout rounds. Melvyn Teoh is a sports journalist at The Straits Times. Join ST's Telegram channel and get the latest breaking news delivered to you.
