AJ Dybantsa's Motto: 'Keep it in the Family' Fuels His Pursuit of the No. 1 Pick

Consider the audacity of AJ Dybantsa . The 19-year-old from Brockton, Massachusetts , is days away from concluding the final phase in the first act of what could be a Hall of Fame career. These closing hours of pre-NBA life are the culmination of a zealous plan — something he and his family have essentially willed into existence, without abate— across the past four years.

It's no guarantee Dybantsa goes No. 1 to the Washington Wizards on Tuesday night, but that is, indubitably, the expectation from a lot of NBA executives and, of course, Dybantsa. Earlier this week, just a few days removed from meeting with Wizards leadership in Los Angeles on June 11 and 12, I asked him if he believed all of the presumptions and many of the mock drafts would be right. Is he about to be the No. 1 pick over Darryn Peterson and Cameron Boozer ?

"Yes," he told CBS Sports.

Dybantsa delivered his answer in that blunt, confident tone he's grown into as he's become a more self-assured and more famous young man. When it comes to basketball, Dybantsa usually gets what he expects. Imagine planning year after year of your life around one moment. That's what next Tuesday is all about; Dybantsa doesn't shrug off or downplay how much draft night means to him and the symbolism tied to the top pick. For him, it's an evidential link connecting what he's done and who he is with what he believes he'll do and who he will become over the next 15 years (or more).

"I have one piece of advice: Don't overthink this," BYU coach Kevin Young, who was an NBA assistant from 2016-2024, told CBS Sports. "This is no knock on the other guys. I think those guys are great players. But if you're just talking straight NBA, I say this with all due respect to the writers and the bloggers and the rankers. I've lived the NBA life. I've been in the war rooms. I've been to the Finals. He's the kind of guy everyone's trying to get. The 6-9, can-do-everything who, by the way, is a freak athlete. Who, by the way, checks all the boxes from a human being standpoint. Like, those are so rare that it's, just, do not overthink this."

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Sometimes projected No. 1 picks are equal parts prideful and bashful about being at that spot. A lot of pressure comes with a 1 attached to your name. Some athletes don't like to focus on it. That's not Dybantsa. He has hunted this for more than four years and wants to tell you about it. He wants to be the first pick, even though the franchise that knows him best, the Utah Jazz, is sitting there at No. 2. Dybantsa believes he's the best player in maybe the best high school class of the 21st century. Going No. 1 would bring validation, which is ironic because, in getting to know him and his family over the past few years, Dybantsa doesn't appear to seek validation in most other parts of his life.

"He's a generationally good player, certainly for me, and I was lucky enough to be around Wemby," BYU associate head coach Will Voigt, who coached the Spurs' G League franchise during Victory Wembanyama's rookie year, told CBS Sports. "There's a lot of the same stuff. These kinds of guys are different, and you can see it like that (snaps fingers). And AJ is like that."

The Dybantsas have dictated every step of the journey

After steadily rising to national fame in the past four years, if Dybantsa becomes the face-of-a-franchise player (something a lot of league executives believe will happen) then this period will be looked back on by future high-end prospects and their families for how the Dybantsas navigated a years-long gangway to the NBA. They'll see how Dybantsa deftly, but somewhat controversially, handled moving through the high school ranks (by going to three private schools in three states) and then to college while getting paid millions upon millions upon millions of dollars and becoming generationally wealthy before ever signing an NBA contract.

It's a trek a lot of players and their families want before ever understanding just how difficult it is to handle. There are plenty of pitfalls and potential traps and distractions or detours or injuries that could negatively affect a teenager while trying to not just make the NBA, but be a top draft pick at that.

Dybantsa has not only done it, he's essentially gotten to this point unscathed.

"I've kind of been dealing with it since I was like 13 years old," Dybantsa said. "I'm used to it now, how this is."

His voyage to Tuesday night has been as widely tracked and covered as probably any prospect since LeBron James (yes, Cooper Flagg included). He was a buzzed-about prospect by the time he started high school. By 16, he was a household name for the average invested American basketball fan. His reputation bloomed not just because of his obvious ability, but because of the marketing and commercial power of social media.

There was a folk lore element to him as well: the malicious gossip and assumptions about why he left Massachusetts to move across the country to play in California . He turned heads again after bolting California to finish high school at a peculiar prep school in, of all places, Utah . That laid the foundation for his unorthodox college choice: Dybantsa was far and away the best recruit to ever choose to play at BYU (and was paid millions for doing so). Though the Cougars fell well short of expectations (23-12, a 6-seed and no NCAA Tournament wins), Dybantsa nonetheless delivered in his one and only college season, as his talents always suggested he would. He scored the third most points by a freshman in NCAA history (894) and was a unanimous First Team All-American . From the day he stepped on campus last summer in Provo until the end of BYU's season, Dybantsa never missed a practice.

"He's the most mature 18-year-old I've been around," BYU assistant Brandon Dunson said. "It's refreshing to see, because I've been around a lot of people in his position and there's so much BS around them."

Those who don't know Dybantsa or his father, Ace, or mother, Chelsea, have assumed the BS has been part of the package dating back to, at least, his sophomore year of high school. That's a misguided notion, though it's true that at every juncture of this journey the family has been insistent on doing it their way. That meant saying no to a lot of people who wanted a piece of AJ, even if well-intentioned.

"He makes my job easier," Dybantsa said of his dad. "Doesn't really let me get too high on myself, so I just stay in the lab."

The Dybantsas have kept a close circle. They have dictated the terms of just about everything AJ has been involved in, which isn't a novel approach, but the way they've been perceived by some vs. the reality of how they've maneuvered this world privately are two different stories.

Among the most scrutinized decisions: Dybantsa is the rare prospect who will enter the NBA without an agent. Dad has played that role for AJ from the beginning. You want to talk to Dybantsa, you need to go through Ace. While the family has a business advisor in former agent Leonard Armato (who represented Shaquille O'Neal during his playing days), almost every basketball decision Dybantsa has made since he was in middle school has happened with his parents' blessing or at their orders.

And to this point, pretty much all of it has worked out.

"We've been staying true to ourselves and not just following the [usual] path," Dybantsa said. "We are trying to pave our own way and do it in our way, and thank god it has worked out so far."

Can you control your NBA destiny? Players, parents and agents have tried the gambit for decades. Few have gotten to this point by doing it entirely on their terms and, for the most part, succeeding like the Dybantsas.

"All of it has felt surprisingly normal, because when you take a step back and talk about it, it seems pretty insane," Voigt said.

The story of why Dybantsa won't hire an agent

For the past few years, there has been an aggressive nationwide chase happening that no one has been able to win. No matter the pitch, no matter the concessions, no matter the reputation, no matter the list of clients or the connections across the sports and marketing world, nobody has remotely come close to being able to convince Ace Dybantsa why his son should be represented by anyone but Ace Dybantsa.

"A lot of them are pissed at me, but too bad," he told CBS Sports earlier this week.

For the first time, for this story, Ace revealed the reasons behind one of the lingering mysteries in basketball: Why won't Dybantsa hire an agent like almost everybody else? Not only has it not happened, Ace said it was never close to happening and will not be happening in the future. The origin starts in AJ's early teens when he played for Expressions Elite, a prominent Massachusetts-based grassroots program that's sponsored by Nike.

"I had no idea that first year how these things were," Ace said about the start of the journey. "I had no idea what AAU was. To me, we're just playing basketball."

When Expressions again recruited Dybantsa as a pre-teen, Ace got his first true insights into the inner workings of grassroots basketball and the agency world. This was just coming out of COVID, so the family was still getting its bearings on the full operation.

"They told me what they had to do. They promised some stuff," Ace said. "I still had no clue what was going on. This is when he was entering eighth grade. Then, the second year, that's when I was like, whoa."

According to Ace, by the time AJ was 14, the family was being pushed toward picking an agent. (Yes, at 14.)

"The main guy [with Expressions] comes to me, he goes, 'AJ's gonna make half a billion dollars in his career. Only three agents can represent him.' He never named them," Ace said. "He said, 'When the time comes, I will bring them to you. You can pick any of the three.' I'm like, OK. I go home and tell my wife. My wife says, 'Ace.' I say, 'I know. He thinks I'm stupid.' You're gonna bring the three that you mentioned, which of them I'm gonna pick, you're going to have a point or two."

By that he means the program director would get a kickback for steering his son to a certain agent.

"So, I play the game," Ace said. "And then the other thing they're trying to do, they're trying to control me: 'You can't let AJ talk to anybody.' … I thought AJ was my son."

Ace played along initially out of curiosity more than anything else. He wanted to see who was telling the truth and how agents worked with middlemen to try and lure future NBA lottery picks as young as 13 or 14. It all felt off. Certain agents were given immediate meetings, while others were purportedly told it would be months before they could meet the family. Ace also said there was a trainer at that time working with the program who they felt wasn't looking out for the best interest of AJ.

In what way?

"He was looking for money," Ace said.

AJ's parents have had access to his social media since the start. They've seen dozens of agents and go-betweeners in his DMs, offering him money, cars and other perks. Many of them were cut off right away.

"I tell you not to bother me. If you don't respect my wish, you know the thing I like about cell phones, iPhone, just block it," he said. "I blocked so many people."

Dybantsa eventually left Expressions, and then left Massachusetts after starting his high school years playing for Saint Sebastian's prep school.

"They're trying to threaten me. I said, 'I'm from Africa. Good luck,'" Ace said. "If you get an agent, come on, they're getting a piece. Last time I checked, I'm the one that changed the diapers for AJ, not y'all. You come to me [and say] 'Ace, we're going to help your son, we're going to do this and get you to another level. Can you help our program?' That's fair. But trying to use my son? Now that, oh, no, no, no, that won't work. I have nothing aga

_Originally reported by [CBS Sports](https://www.cbssports.com/college-basketball/news/aj-dybantsa-nba-draft-no-1-pick/)._