During family reunions over Thanksgiving, cousins Matisse and Sidney Thybulle frequently competed against each other in games like hide-and-seek and Nerf gun battles.
One of those competitive moments occurred in video games where Matisse Thybulle, who is four years older than his cousin, used his knowledge to his advantage. When Sidney inquired how to pull off a “power slide” in Mario Kart, Matisse told his cousin that he had to hit the buttons in a specific pattern to call up a dialog box in which he had to type a certain password to acquire the special move.
None of it was true, Matisse admitted.
“He would sit there yelling, ‘It’s not working! I can’t get it!’” Matisse Thybulle said with a laugh. “And I would yell, ‘You’re not doing it fast enough!’ while I was just flying by him.”
Added Sidney Thybulle: “I had no idea how to do it. I kept asking him and Chloe [Matisse’s younger sister], ‘How do you do this? I keep losing.’ But he wouldn’t tell me. He kept giving me the wrong controls and stuff to mess me up.”
Now years removed from video game hijinks, the Thybulle cousins have found common ground in the sport of basketball. Sidney Thybulle is the projected starting center for the Johns Hopkins program and the reigning Centennial Conference’s Defensive Player of the Year.
Matisse Thybulle is a shooting guard-small forward who was selected with the No. 20 overall pick of the 2019 NBA draft by the Philadelphia 76ers. He was named to the league’s All-Defensive Second Team in 2021 and 2022.
Basketball has fortified the already-strong family ties between the cousins.
“I remember being younger and going, ‘Damn, Matisse is so cool. I want to be like him,’” said Sidney, a 21-year-old senior. “So he’s definitely been a big role model in my life and someone I still look up to.”
Added Matisse, 25: “It’s inspiring and gratifying. It makes me proud not because of any influence that I may or may not have had, but I’m always proud of players who own their identity as defensive players and then do it better than everybody else, and it means even more to me when it’s my baby cousin who is doing it and doing it at a very high level.”
Sidney Thybulle’s father, Errol, is the older brother to Matisse’s father, Greg. The families usually reunited twice a year during summer vacations and Thanksgivings.
Matisse Thybulle described Sidney as a little brother and acknowledged there were times when he “tormented” his younger cousin.
“The age gap was enough that I could kind of use it to my advantage,” Matisse said. “It was always fun and playful. Whether it was or hide-and-seek, we were always competing at something, and I was leveraging my age and knowledge.”
When Matisse Thybulle began to get serious about basketball during his sophomore year of high school, he could no longer attend the family reunions and did not see Sidney and his younger sister, Grace, currently a sophomore forward on Yale’s basketball team, until Sidney’s high school graduation in Irvington, New York, in 2019.
By then, the 6-foot-8, 245-pound Sidney looked down at his 6-foot-5, 201-pound cousin.
“I saw Sid as this little, kind of chubby, super uncoordinated kid,” Matisse said. “And then I saw him, and Sid had become this colossal Greek god who is tall and handsome and coordinated and strong. This little kid I could manipulate at will was no longer, and I had to be humbled by this kid who was now bigger and stronger and smarter than me.”
Added Sidney: “I guess I did humble him a bit. Maybe got him back a bit for those days of Mario Kart.”
Defense has become the Thybulle cousins’ forte on the floor. Last winter, Sidney ranked second in the Centennial Conference in total offensive rebounds (82) and overall rebounds per game (7.3) and fourth in blocks per game (1.4).
In 2021, Matisse averaged career highs in both steals per game (1.6) and blocks per game (1.1) in just 20 minutes per game. Last season, he bumped his steals average to 1.7 and tied his rate of blocks to become the only player in the league to reach those marks.
Blue Jays coach Josh Loeffler said the Thybulle cousins share a rare tenacity on defense.
“I think that ability to just really change the game with the presence of defending is very similar,” he said. “They do it in different ways, but they are both gifted defensively. … I think players who are able to have that consistent defensive effort whether they’re scoring a lot or not are rare, and the two of them do it so consistently that I have to believe neither of them sees basketball as, ‘How many points can I score?’ and that’s not common.”
Sidney Thybulle said he and his cousin appreciate they can control how they play defense.
“I think it’s just a value we have intrinsically, and then we just apply it to the court,” he said, adding that he is trying to absorb his cousin’s ability of luring opponents into throwing lazy passes to teammates. “A lot of times, your shot might not be falling and the game might not be going your way, but one of the things you can control is your defense. I think we both know that and really appreciate that part of basketball and try to make it our own.”
The next step for Sidney Thybulle, according to Loeffler, is becoming more consistent, especially on offense. Thybulle averaged 7.9 points for the season but reached double digits in seven of his last 11 games last season.
“He’s still a work in progress in a good way, and it’s exciting when you have a very good player still developing,” Loeffler said.
The Thybulle cousins are in regular contact, and Sidney attended a pair of 76ers playoff games last season as his cousin’s guest. Several of Sidney’s teammates and Loeffler are fans of the 76ers and Matisse, which continues to surprise the latter.
“It’s funny to me because Sidney and me know each other as the kids who just used to mess with each other and play hide and seek and just be kids together,” Matisse said. “Now he’s grown up, and he’s in an environment where his peers look up to me, and I think that’s kind of fun for us as a family. We’re all like, ‘Can you believe that these guys think I’m cool?’ We can joke about that kind of stuff.”
Sidney Thybulle said his cousin is the pride of the Thybulle family.
“The fame or attention has never changed him,” he said. “He’s unapologetically himself ever since he got to the NBA, and I know that’s not the case for a lot of people. Just watching him handle himself with composure, it’s really so inspirational and speaks volumes for the person he is and the person he’s about to become.”
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