.avif){kind=logo}
On a calm and quiet Saturday morning in Provo, UT, AJ Dybantsa is cleverly sneaking in some jumpers on the hardwood in between photo breaks at his cover shoot. The Marriott Center, which serves as the home arena of the BYU basketball program, is completely desolated on this mid-August morning. AJ has the entire arena floor (and building) to himself, and he’s taking full advantage of it to take as many jumpers as he can in between pictures, whenever the photographer pauses to switch out lenses or rearrange lighting equipment.
But there’s more to it than merely an excited teenager getting some shots up because a full-size court just happens to be in the same area where his magazine cover shoot is taking place. One common phrase you’ll hear from those around AJ is that he’s “addicted to the grind,” to the art of perfecting one’s craft, to the time commitment that comes with the work—a little too addicted, if anything. See, technically AJ isn’t supposed to be doing any basketball movements on the day of our shoot. He’s not even supposed to be touching a basketball or stepping on a court. Not just on this Saturday, but for the next week. And not because of some obscure injury, but because he’s been told by the BYU coaching staff and his father, Anicet aka “Ace,” to take a few days off to give his body some much needed rest after going so hard the last few months.
Just how full-speed has AJ been going lately, you ask? Well, this might sum it up for you—whereas most BYU freshmen were slated to arrive on campus in late August (still a couple weeks after our shoot), AJ arrived in late April, straight from his high school, Utah Prep. And he immediately started taking college courses and working out with the Cougars’ trainers. In fact, he left high school as soon as he completed his final class requirements (before the school year had officially culminated) and didn’t even stick around for his graduation ceremony. He asked the school to just mail him the diploma instead. If you find someone out there who criticizes AJ, chances are that it’s not because of his work ethic.
“I touched down at BYU on April 29. I definitely wanted to come out here in April before anybody got on campus so I could get used to the college life… We were like, it’d be better if we could just go to college early and [Utah Prep] could just ship our diplomas instead of staying at school [for a few more weeks] doing nothing just so we could walk the stage,” recalls AJ. “The first couple of days [on campus], it was smooth. I was just walking around trying to get to know where everything was at, and then I started classes in mid-May. At first, I only took two classes: Writing & Rhetoric 101 and Exercise Science.”
When he wasn’t in one of the academic buildings, you were likely to find him at the practice facility this summer. Sometimes doing two-a-days…or even three.
“My summer workouts started around 7:30 a.m. I would lift, work out, do study hall, and then I’d have class around 3 p.m. And then I’d repeat it every day,” says AJ. “I would come back to the gym sometimes after class at 5 or 6, and then I’d go eat dinner. [This summer], I just wanted to continue updating my three-level scoring—just being a better finisher, a better mid-range scorer, and a better three-point shooter.”
Thus, it’s understandable why Ace and the BYU coaching staff were asking AJ to take a break from basketball for a few days in the lead-up to the start of the academic year. Summer classes had ended by the time of our shoot and most members of the basketball team had returned home to hang out with family and friends. AJ, though? He was struggling to abide by the no-basketball mandate and was still on campus. And so his dad came up with a plan. The morning after his SLAM shoot, they’d fly out to Vegas for a few days on a mini vacation that would essentially force AJ to take a break from campus and the gym. By design, there wasn’t much on the itinerary for this trip—other than rest, of course.
Ace, sitting with Chelsea, AJ’s mom, in the stands just a handful of rows up from the court, couldn’t help but laugh as he watched AJ sneak in some basketball moves (like, real off-the-dribble-type drills) on the day of our shoot. When we tell AJ that we heard about the no-basketball mandate/upcoming Vegas vacation, he takes a deep breath before looking down to the ground and shaking his head. It becomes clear that if he had his wish, he’d forgo any vacation and simply stay in the lab.
“He was initially frustrated about the Vegas vacation and not playing basketball that week. He wanted to go to a workout with some NBA pros out in Miami instead,” recalls Ace a few weeks after our shoot. “And then just two days before we went to Vegas for our vacation, I got an email from an agent saying, I’m gonna fly you guys out to LA for a private workout with all these NBA superstars that are going to be at UCLA. AJ wanted to go. I had to push back and let him know that he needed to rest and not touch a ball.
“He understood after the trip, though. He fell asleep on the plane. On vacation, he slept till noon. I would get up at 5 a.m. to do my workout, and I’d wait till 9 a.m. to wake him up for breakfast, and he’d be out like a light. I told him, See, you were tired. Your body really needed rest. Now he understands. He loves to work, but sometimes I have to get on him and say, You need some rest.”
A lot of the noise around AJ’s recruitment came via all the numbers that were recklessly being thrown around by reporters and fans online—everyone claiming that BYU must have offered a “bag” that no other college program was able to match, and swearing they knew what those numbers were. Why else would a kid from Massachusetts who was raised Catholic end up going to a school in Utah that was 99 percent Mormon? they said. In the age of NIL, where schools can now put together enticing NIL packages for recruits, these kinds of rumors are unfortunately unavoidable. But Ace says the reality is that they went through the recruitment process much differently than what people on the outside could ever even imagine.
“The funny thing is that we never told him how much money any of the schools were offering,” Ace explains. “We wanted to go about the recruiting process very differently from others. My wife and I decided not to tell him because we didn’t want money to be a factor in his decision. So, he came into my room one day and said, Dad, I’m going to BYU. I said, What?! He repeated, I’m going to BYU. Then I asked him, Why BYU? He goes, KY—Coach Kevin Young. He said, Dad, I want to be a pro. He came from the pros. He coached one of my favorite players, Kevin Durant. He coached D-Book, he coached CP3. AJ reached out to Kevin Durant to ask about KY. Coach brought an analytics staffer from the Suns, he brought the nutritionist from the Suns, the strength and conditioning coach came from the Milwaukee Bucks. He’s like, Dad, I’m going to BYU.
“Not only did he not know how much money each school was offering, but he also didn’t even end up picking the school that was offering the most money. There were schools that offered more. If it was about the money, we could’ve just went to BYU and said, Hey, so and so is offering this much more, just to get more money for AJ to come here. All these crazy numbers were being thrown around in the media but people don’t even know—AJ knows now what he got, but people just wanted to speculate.”
It goes without saying that when AJ committed to BYU last winter, he instantly became the biggest recruit in program history. Despite having historic basketball powerhouses like Kansas and UNC on his final list, AJ’s willingness and eagerness to take the road less traveled, the one that would instantly make him the focal point of all opposing defenses while having to carry the weight of a program on his shoulders, sums up his journey in a nutshell. It’s the type of challenge he’s never shied away from.
“Obviously, there are big expectations, but I chose BYU because of the culture and the coaches, so it was more so playing basketball at the school I wanted to go to and that wanted me,” says AJ. “We’re trying to get it rowdy in here. We’re trying to have the fans popping. We’re trying to get it very exciting, very loud in the gym. That’s our goal.”
“He’s used to it,” says Ace of the expectations. “He’s been on the map since the eighth grade. The cameras, the media, the microphones. This doesn’t faze him anymore. And it’s all because he stays humble.”
In BYU, AJ found a program that had the type of coaching staff he was looking for—the track record of success, but also the sense of community recruits hope for. He’s read up on the program’s history in the months since. Done the research. Watched the old YouTube clips. And now that he’s studied BYU’s rich past, he’s looking to restore the same feeling that some local legends have brought to Provo throughout the decades.
“I talked to Jimmer [Fredette], I talked to Danny Ainge, and even a couple of our staff members that have played at BYU, so I got some insights from them on what it’s like…They were just saying that we have some of the best, if not the best, fans in the country, and we really gotta embrace it and use it to the best of our abilities,” says AJ. “When you commit here, you know you have to watch Jimmer highlights. He DM’d me after I committed. He followed me and texted me, congratulated me. I then went to do my research. I looked up Jimmer highlights. You hear about Jimmer Mania, so I said, let me go watch with my two eyes. Bucket. Shot is cash…Hopefully he can come to a couple of our games and I can pick his brain a little bit more.”
And so, the stage is now set. The No. 1 recruit in the Class of 2025, according to ESPN, is ready to embark on a journey that will go down in the history books regardless of what the next five months look like. It’s a voyage that we haven’t seen before. One that shows the beauty in blazing your own path and doing it your way. The Dybantsa way.
“When I first got here, even on my visit, it didn’t feel real because you look outside and there are mountains everywhere and snow on top of the mountains. It doesn’t even look real, but it’s just a beautiful place to be,” says AJ. “I had to leave high school and come here months before [everyone else] and just stay in a secluded area to try to accomplish my dreams and try to get used to everything so I’m more prepared than a lot of people.
“I want to be remembered here as a person that came in embracing the culture, embracing the fans, but on the court, a player that came to win [and] gave the crowd a very exciting show…It’s going to be an exciting season—[I] hope they’re ready.”
SHOP COLLECTION