Mavs' Dereck Lively II's bond with North Texas second graders

Second grade teacher Brittany Cohen has been a Dallas Mavericks fan since she moved to Texas as a teenager.

So in her classroom at Glenhope Elementary in Colleyville, Cohen incorporates what she coined “Mavs Math” to make numbers fun for her students by having them track scores and team stats. Her reputation as the “Mavs teacher” quickly spread across the school — and caught the attention of Mavericks center Dereck Lively II, the team’s rookie star.

“They know I love them. They know that for sure,” Lively said of the class at a recent news conference.

Over the past few years, Cohen’s students have graphed how many points Mavericks point guard Luka Doncic scored per game, compared their height to that of former center Boban Marjanovic and collected data on how many dunks Lively made in a season.

While watching a preseason game at lunchtime, her recent class of 18 students became enchanted by Lively. His game highlights became a staple at morning class meetings, with the 7- and 8-year-olds discussing his performance and watching clips.

Related:Success of Mavs’ Dereck Lively II has him shocked: ‘I don’t think any of us expected this’

“He’s young, and he’s seven-foot-one. And he makes these cool dunks, so they just fell in love with him immediately,” Cohen said. “They just went crazy for him.”

Her students from the Grapevine-Colleyville ISD school even wrote him letters saying that he inspired them.

“[You’re] pretty much my favorite player on the Mavs,” Pierce Austin, 8, wrote in a November letter.

Then during a December game, the educator, who is a season ticket holder, met Lively’s late mother, Kathy Drysdale. Cohen gushed over how much her “kids love him. He’s been a huge inspiration to them,” she recalled.

“It meant a lot to her that he had already made an impact on another generation,” Cohen said. “You could tell that she was so proud of him.”

Related:How Mavericks’ Dereck Lively II has summoned strength, poise after mother’s passing

Later that month, the Mavericks’ NBA All-Rookie second-teamer surprised the class with a video.

“Thank you guys for being able to just show all your love and support for me on the basketball court,” Lively said. “It is so inspiring. Being able to know that you guys are watching me, it just makes it that much more fun.”

It was the start of a close relationship between Lively and the class, which attended a game in February. The students sat on the court during warm-ups, talked to Lively, got autographs and met other players. Cohen, unfortunately, was unable to go because she was traveling for her daughter’s birthday.

Lively said at the recent news conference that he wanted to make a positive impact on the students’ lives and “to be able to make sure that, no matter if you’re 5 years old, 10 years old, 15 years old, whatever you want to do, whatever you want to be, do your best to do it.”

Cameron Cloud, 8, was in disbelief after meeting the basketball star.

“I was like, ‘How did I get to meet him? Oh my gosh. Mrs. Cohen, how are you doing all this stuff for me?’” he said.

Cameron, who plays basketball, baseball and football and aspires to become a professional athlete, hopes to similarly inspire others when he’s older.

“I get to meet some fans and like, I can say hi to them, like Dereck Lively did to me,” he said.

Related:10 things to know about Mavericks’ Dereck Lively II: Tyson Chandler comparisons and more

Class parents also followed Lively’s year, recognizing that he was going through so much — including his mother’s illness and her death in April, playoffs pressure and his own injuries.

But still, he made “these kiddos a priority … [It] speaks volumes of his character,” said Britney Cloud, Cameron’s mom.

Cohen said her students feel important because of the time Lively spent with them, so they wanted to pay it forward.

After brainstorming in class, they decided to set up a lemonade stand at their school in early April to raise money for UT Southwestern Medical Center’s cancer center in his name. Lively’s mother had been battling cancer since 2013.

The children hoped he would stop by, but Cohen managed their expectations. “He’s an NBA player,” she reminded them. “It doesn’t mean that he doesn’t care. It just means that he’s busy.”

Little did they know, the player had messaged their teacher that he was rushing over to Colleyville to surprise the kids, who exploded in shrieks and jumped up in excitement when he arrived.

“Whenever we’re young, we have many dreams. We have many aspirations, and when we grow up, we lose those,” Lively said at the news conference. “We lose sight of who we wanted to be, what dreams we had as a kid, and I feel like we should never lose those things.”

About a week after the lemonade stand, Lively’s mother died. She had spent more than a decade battling Hodgkin’s lymphoma, a kind of cancer that develops in the lymph system.

“To make time for a bunch of kids that he doesn’t even really know when he’s going through something so terrible in his personal life, says so much about him,” Cohen said. “He’s so special. He’s changed our kids’ lives.”

The DMN Education Lab deepens the coverage and conversation about urgent education issues critical to the future of North Texas.

The DMN Education Lab is a community-funded journalism initiative, with support from Bobby and Lottye Lyle, Communities Foundation of Texas, The Dallas Foundation, Dallas Regional Chamber, Deedie Rose, Garrett and Cecilia Boone, The Meadows Foundation, The Murrell Foundation, Solutions Journalism Network, Southern Methodist University, Sydney Smith Hicks and the University of Texas at Dallas. The Dallas Morning News retains full editorial control of the Education Lab’s journalism.