Tyneeha Rivers grew up in a tiny rowhouse on Divinity Street in West Philadelphia. This was where her childhood began, but not where it ended. Rivers’ mother, Antonia Tucker, was raising three kids on her own. Some nights, they went without dinner; paying rent was a constant struggle.

So the family would move. They spent some time with Rivers’ aunt in the Bartram Village projects. Then they relocated to 58th and Master, and then to 48th and Walnut.

Tucker had two jobs. During the day, she’d work in customer service, and at night, she’d clean hotels. Rivers would take care of her brothers while her mother was gone. This wasn’t an easy arrangement, but it taught the girl a valuable lesson.

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“That grit,” Rivers said, “that I was able to see in my mom.”

She went off to Indiana University of Pennsylvania in the mid-1990s — the first member of her immediate family to attend college — which is where she met Jack Bridges, a student who came from the same section of the city she did.

They started dating, and in 1996, Tyneeha gave birth to a son, Mikal Bridges. She was 19, and separated from Jack not long after.

Family and friends were skeptical that Rivers would be able to have a career of her own while raising a child. But she was determined to prove them wrong.

And she did. Over the next 29 years, Rivers would earn her bachelor’s and master’s degrees, as she steadily climbed the corporate ladder, all while nurturing a young boy with NBA aspirations.

That boy is now one of the best basketball players in the world. Bridges won two national championships at Villanova and now, in his eighth NBA season and second with the New York Knicks, he’s playing in the NBA Finals for the second time, five years after his first appearance.

On Wednesday night, the Knicks pulled away in Game 1 to defeat the San Antonio Spurs on the road, 105-95. Game 2 was Friday night, also in Texas.

Reaching the Finals is one of many career milestones, none of which would be possible without his “Mama.”

“I don’t know how she did it,’’ Bridges told the Athletic in 2018. “I can’t imagine. I’m so grateful for everything she’s done for me.”

A small home full of big dreams

After Bridges was born, his mother tried to stay at IUP, but found it difficult without an income. So she returned home in search of a job, and a way toward her education.

She was hired in the late 1990s to work in the mailroom at Vanguard, the Malvern-based investment management company, and began taking business administration classes at Cabrini College in Wayne.

After living in the Overbrook section of Philadelphia for a few years, Rivers and Mikal moved to Devon, a Main Line suburb in Chester County that had a strong public school system.

Jack Bridges stayed in touch with Mikal through phone calls, attending his games, and with the occasional visit, usually at the McDonald’s in Conshohocken.

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“As far as him playing sports, I have to credit that to him, to his mom, to his environment,” Jack Bridges said. “Those things were available [to him]. His mom did a great job of always keeping him busy.”

Devon was where Bridges’ love for basketball began to take shape. He was a mainstay on his elementary school basketball team — nicknamed the “Devon Dudes” — and would shoot hoops at South Devon Park (now known as Bo Connor Park).

Rivers’ goal was to give her son access to a life she didn’t have. This meant going to the best schools, working with the best basketball coaches, and feeling safe as he navigated everyday life.

But for all of the benefits of living in an upscale suburb, there were times when the family felt out of place. The area was full of beautiful, centuries-old colonial and Tudor homes. Rivers and Bridges shared a small, two-bedroom apartment.

One day when Bridges was in the second grade, he asked his mother why they couldn’t live in “a big house like my friends.”

Rivers told her son that one day he would have not only a big house but a place down the Shore and all the success he could dream of. He looked at her and shrugged his shoulders.

“He was like, ‘OK!’” Rivers recalled. “But I said, ‘Don’t worry, we’re going to get that big house soon.’ He said, ‘OK, Mom.’ And gave me a hug.”

She held back tears in the moment, but cried herself to sleep. It was hard for Rivers to imagine working any harder. On top of her job at Vanguard, she had pick up part-time gigs, like tutoringstudents in the area.

After she helped her son with his homework and put him to bed, she’d stay up until 3 or 4 in the morning, doing homework of her own. Rivers was taking only one class at a time at Cabrini, so getting her degree took several years.

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“But we laugh about it now,” she said. “I told Mikal, ‘Remember when you told me that?’ He said, ‘I’m sorry, Mom, I put too much pressure on you. I’m so sorry.’

“I said, ‘No, you didn’t really put pressure on me; that was my fuel to work harder. So I could provide a better life for you.’”

Just like Rivers saw grit in her mother, Bridges saw grit in his. Basketball was not an inexpensive sport, and Rivers spent every paycheck on coaches and camps. For a while, she had no savings and often could only pay down bills instead of settling them in full.

But things got easier. She eventually got her degree. After nearly nine years at Vanguard, during which she’d worked her way up from sorting mail to becoming a senior 401(k) administrator, she was hired as a project manager at Merrill Lynch.

The family moved to Malvern, and Bridges transferred to Great Valley High School, where he played basketball under coach Jim Nolan. He spent his springs and summers on Devon’s AAU team, Team Next.

Rivers was at every game, and became a coach of sorts at home. She would make her son do 10 to 20 pushups for each missed foul shot. This routine ended when he went to Villanova, but it does seem to have left a positive impact: Bridges is an 84% free throw shooter over his NBA career.

In 2013, coach Rob Moore of Constitution High School told Jack Bridges about a well-known AAU program in the Nike Elite Youth Basketball League, Team Final. One of Moore’s players, Ahmad Gilbert, was on the roster, and Moore thought that it would be worth reaching out to the team’s coach, Rob Brown.

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Mikal tried out and earned a spot. His parents quickly realized that it would change the course of his career. Not long after he joined the EYBL team, Mikal and Team Final headed to a summer circuit in Anaheim, Calif.

Rivers had a fear of flying, so Mikal’s father offered to take him. It was a whole new level of exposure and competition. All of a sudden, Bridges was going up against future NBA players like Devin Booker; renowned college coaches Rick Pitino and Tom Izzo were in the stands.

“That dude showed out [in that circuit], and it changed his whole life,” Jack said of his son.

From Team Final to the NBA

Being a part of Team Final put Mikal in front of a wider audience, but it also required much more travel. This was challenging for Rivers to manage; she’d have to get off work early to take him to practice in South Philadelphia multiple times a week.

She would also drive to tournaments, like Peach Jam in South Carolina, about 600 miles from Malvern.

But the sacrifice paid off. Bridges had a great showing in his year on the EYBL circuit and earned a number of scholarship offers. He chose Villanova, which, like being on Team Final, proved to be a career-altering decision.

His college career started slow. Bridges redshirted his first year, spending his time building strength and honing skill rather than competing on the court.

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But his mom still went to every game, and still sent him encouraging text messages beforehand, even though they both knew he’d be on the bench.

“I would text him and we would count down,” she said. “Thirty-nine games, 20 games left, 10 games left. I said, ‘This is the last game, this is it.’”

The next year, Bridges appeared in all 40 of the Wildcats’ games, solidifying himself as a reliable bench player, one who would contribute to Villanova’s 2015-16 NCAA title.

By his junior year, Bridges had put on almost 30 pounds. He was a more complete player, one who could handle the physicality of the Big East.

Bridges averaged 32.1 minutes, 17.7 points, and 5.3 rebounds. He was named to multiple all-American teams and received the Julius Erving Award for the nation’s top collegiate small forward.

He ended his time at Villanova with another NCAA championship in 2018, the Wildcats’ second in three years. Bridges declared for the NBA draft just over a week later.

Rivers had worked in human resources for the 76ers throughout her son’s college career and had just been promoted to global vice president of human resources for Harris Blitzer Sports & Entertainment, which owns the team.

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So when the Sixers selected Bridges with the 10th overall pick in the draft, Rivers was beside herself with excitement. Her mind raced with possibilities. She could continue to attend all of his games. They could have lunch together, and sneak in visits at the Sixers’ facility.

But that blissful reverie came to an abrupt halt. Minutes after Bridges was drafted, the Sixers traded him to the Phoenix Suns for Zhaire Smith (the 16th pick) and a 2021 first-round pick.

Instead of playing for his hometown team, only a short drive from his mother, Rivers and Bridges would be thousands of miles apart for the first time in their lives.

“He called me,” she said. “‘Mom, you OK?’ I was being strong. I was like, ‘I’m OK if you’re OK. How are you feeling?’ He’s like, ‘We will get through it.’

“This is the son that I have. He just got traded, and his first call is to his mom. Asking me if I’m OK with everything.”

A Villanova homecoming

Being so far from home was difficult at first. But Bridges grew to love his stay in Phoenix, which included an NBA Finals appearance in 2021, and was disappointed when he was traded to Brooklyn in 2023.

Going to the Knicks in 2024 felt like a homecoming. Bridges was reunited with college teammates Jalen Brunson and Josh Hart, playing in Madison Square Garden again, just as they had in the Big East Tournament and other games.

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With this appearance in the NBA Finals, the former Villanova stars will try to win the Knicks’ first championship in 53 years. Rivers will be at every game, watching with anxious excitement.

No matter how it ends, the single mother will know that her son has made the most of her sacrifice. That the late nights studying, the long drives to practice, the paychecks spent on camps, were all worth it.

And if she ever needs a reminder, Rivers can head down the Shore. There, in Avalon, is a big, beautiful house overlooking the ocean that belongs to none other than Mikal Bridges.

“I’ll sit out there on his deck, and I’ll look at the water,” she said. “I’ll take myself back to the second grader who wondered why our house was so small.

“To have this big beautiful home in Avalon, and the beautiful place he has in New York, I just quietly weep sometimes. I’ll remind myself of where we were, and where we are.”