Tyler Harvey can pinpoint the moment that his life changed forever.
As he sits on a basketball court in Wollongong, the franchise star of the city’s NBL team the Illawarra Hawks, Harvey has a resume that few can rival. He has amassed records, awards, and achievements, across nearly every level of professional basketball.
But it wasn’t meant to be this way for the Californian.
In fact, he nearly didn’t end up playing Division I basketball at all; a last-minute coaching hire at Eastern Washington University provided him a lifeline and set in place the events that would dictate his professional life.
“Out of high school I had zero scholarships to play, so I was actually going to play Division III basketball,” Harvey said.
“The coach [of Whitworth] at the time, Jim Hayford, was at a Division III college, it was a top two Division III college in the nation, so I was going to go there, but I think about a week or two before I got there he got the job at Eastern Washington which was about 45 minutes from there, so I got the call from him saying he was no longer going to coach at Whitworth, he was going to take himself to Eastern Washington.
“In the back of my mind, I was kind of in limbo of ‘where am I going to be? Am I still going to go here, or am I hopefully going to get a chance to play Division I basketball?
“He told me he was going to bring me along with him, but I had to be a walk-on… so I took that opportunity, my goal as a kid was to play Division I basketball, so I saw that as an opportunity to fulfill my dream as a kid, so I did that, I walked on.”
For two years, Harvey did just that, part of the Eastern Washington University basketball team as a walk-on player. He had no scholarship and no court time. It was these times that were the toughest for him, and his ever-strong belief in his ability beginning to chafe against the lack of opportunity.
Quietly, he began to wonder if his chance would ever come.
Then, on the 13th of February, 2013, his prayers were answered, in the form of a 13-point deficit against Northern Arizona, with less than four minutes of play left.
For some, this could be considered garbage time, the period of the game where the score is already decided, and the bench players are given some run mainly to rest the starters. But for Harvey, this was the moment that would change the trajectory of his life.
“We had about eight games left in the season and I hadn’t played at all, we were down in the second half, so usually that’s when a red-shirt or somebody who doesn’t play will get into the game, hopefully just to sort of boost that confidence up a little bit,” Harvey said.
“I got that opportunity to go in and play the last minutes of the game, ended up going crazy, I think I had five or six threes in that span, we ended up coming back and winning that game in overtime, and to be honest, my life hasn’t been the same ever since that moment.
“That next year I was put on scholarship, the year after that I led the nation in scoring, and the next year after that I was drafted to the NBA, so I like to tell people you never know when that opportunity is going to come, you don’t know how it’s going to come.”
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It was a rapid ascent for Harvey from here, and one that would lead him to the top of college basketball - literally.
In 2015, Harvey led the entire nation in Division I scoring, putting in 23.1 points per game for the Eagles. He also led the nation in made three-pointers, and EWU’s 26 wins were a school record, enough to take out the Big Sky Conference tournament title, and subsequently qualify his school for the NCAA Tournament, a.k.a March Madness.
“When we went to March Madness it was the second time in school history, so when you’re at a mid-major like Eastern Washington, you have to be the best team in that conference, you have to win the tournament, there’s a Big Sky tournament and at the end of the year - for when I was there - the top eight teams play in that tournament to hopefully get that bid to play in March Madness,” Harvey said.
“We had to win three games, and we won our final game in Montana to win the championship and then that gave us a bid to play in March Madness.
“It was a mix of a lot of emotions, from a walk-on to getting the opportunity to get to play March Madness which was a childhood dream that not many kids get, it’s just the nature of it, you’re not going to wake up, play college basketball and have a chance to play March Madness, that’s not how it goes.
“It’s hard to win your conference, it’s hard to compete at that level every single year, so it was an unbelievable feeling to get that opportunity, we actually got to play in Portland which wasn’t too far from Eastern Washington, so we had a nice fan base there.”
This is our moment. It’s time to #LetItFly
— EWU Men's Basketball 🏀 (@EWUMBB) March 5, 2023
Narrated by @YoungTRaaw 🎙️#GoEags @BigSkyConf @BigSkyMBB pic.twitter.com/Ya9cqq2jrO
Spurred by this historic season, Harvey and the Eagles faced off against college basketball superpower the Georgetown Hoyas, and despite a valiant effort, they fell 84-74, despite a game-high 27 points from Harvey, including 6-12 from three.
The option was there to run it back with EWU, but Harvey knew what he had to do, deciding to strike while the iron was hot, and enter his name in the NBA Draft.
“It was difficult, I didn’t know if I wanted to come back, your emotions are still high from March Madness and you want to go back and win a game in that tournament, but there’s also not too many times that you’re going to lead the nation in scoring,” Harvey said.
“I think that was my best chance to get myself drafted into the NBA which is also something that’s hard to fathom, coming from a walk-on to earning a scholarship, to playing in March Madness, to getting drafted into the NBA which was the next step, so that was the time for me to test those waters and I eventually was drafted.”
A whirlwind ride would greet Harvey as he entered the world of professional basketball; he was drafted by the Orlando Magic in 2015, played D-League/G-League stints with the Eire BayHawks and the Memphis Hustle, and had stops in Italy, France, and Germany, before coming Down Under to join the Illawarra Hawks.
Now three years into his NBL tenure, it’s the longest he’s spent with a team since his college days, and Harvey says he sees a number of similarities between the fanbase of EWU and Illawarra.
“The Wollongong crowd is very big on community, and that’s what I love the most, obviously the location doesn’t hurt either, this is a beautiful place to be, but they really do get behind you, and we had such a tough year, and one of the things I cherish most about this city is they stuck with us through it all,” Harvey said.
“We had some unlucky events that happened with injury, but the crowd and the fans still turned up to support us, and as players, we look at that and we want to provide for them every time we step on this court, because at the end of the day, basketball is entertainment and we want to be entertaining for our fans, but we also want to win for them as well.
“When that’s not happening you don’t want to lose the fanbase because of that, and they were unbelievable, they kept us going through this really challenging year, and that’s why I love it here.”
The 2022/23 season presented a unique challenge for Harvey and the Hawks; after back-to-back semi-final finishes, the Hawks lost four imports due to injury, and finished with their worst record of all time, 25 losses and only three wins.
Despite it all, Harvey is as content as he has ever been in his career, having found a home in the Illawarra both on and off the court, for maybe the first time since his historic college days.
TYLER HARVEY TO WIN THE GAME. HE IS MAGIC 🪄
— NBL (@NBL) January 19, 2023
UNRIVALLED DRAMA
WHAT A GAME OF NBL BASKETBALL 🤩 pic.twitter.com/218UNw8XkS
Like everyone, the 29-year-old will often catch himself reminiscing on his college days, but he knows to look at it with a wide lens. Tyler Harvey has never been one to stop believing, and he’s not about to stop now.
“I ended up leading the nation in scoring and that’s unbelievable to look back on now and think about that now, but at that time I didn’t even really think about it, so, of course, everybody talks about it nowadays and it’s pretty wild for me to even think that happened to me, but it is something that I will definitely cherish, for sure.”
