{"id":16048,"date":"2026-01-07T04:19:54","date_gmt":"2026-01-07T04:19:54","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.jubi24.com\/?p=16048"},"modified":"2026-01-07T04:19:55","modified_gmt":"2026-01-07T04:19:55","slug":"how-byu-phenom-aj-dybantsa-fits-into-the-churchs-long-love-affair-with-basketball-deseret-news","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.jubi24.com\/?p=16048","title":{"rendered":"How BYU phenom AJ Dybantsa fits into the church\u2019s long love affair with basketball \u2013 Deseret News"},"content":{"rendered":"


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Nike. Red Bull. Signature Books.<\/p>\n

What do they have in common?<\/p>\n

They\u2019ve all signed endorsement deals with AJ Dybantsa.<\/p>\n

AJ, of course, is the 18-year-old multimillionaire playing basketball this season at BYU. His story is well known even among people who don\u2019t watch \u201cSportsCenter.\u201d Because it isn\u2019t every day the top recruit in the country chooses BYU over basketball elites like North Carolina and Kansas. Matter of fact, until now, it wasn\u2019t any day.<\/p>\n

BYU got the nod because its coach, Kevin Young, teaches NBA-style basketball; because Ace and Chelsea, AJ\u2019s parents, approved; and, not incidentally, because BYU and\/or its surrogates agreed to pay him millions of dollars in startup NIL money to seal the deal. <\/p>\n

All this was reported a little over a year ago, on Dec. 10, 2024, in, among other places, the Deseret News<\/p>\n

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Barbara Jones Brown, director of Signature Books, talks with Matthew Bowman, who co-authored the book \u201cGame Changers\u201d with Wayne LeCheminant, before an event for the book at Signature Books in Salt Lake City on Thursday, Dec. 18, 2025. <\/span>| Isaac Hale, Deseret News <\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n

Barbara Jones Brown happened to be reading the news that day. Barbara is the director at Signature Books, a small publishing house in downtown Salt Lake that specializes in books about history. (Her husband, Matt, is an editor of Deseret Magazine).<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was shocking that the No. 1 recruit in the nation chose BYU,\u201d she says. \u201cI realized, even though AJ\u2019s not a Latter-day Saint, that this was Utah history and Mormon history.\u201d<\/p>\n

And that\u2019s how a niche publisher in Salt Lake wound up using the signing of a basketball phenom from Massachusetts to intertwine the histories of AJ, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, the NCAA, the paying of student-athletes, the sport of basketball in general and BYU basketball in particular \u2014 all rolled into one narrative just in time for the only season AJ\u2019s going to spend in Provo.<\/p>\n

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Copies of a book titled \u201cGame Changers,\u201d written by Matthew Bowman and Wayne LeCheminant, are displayed before an event for the book at Signature Books in Salt Lake City on Thursday, Dec. 18, 2025. <\/span>| Isaac Hale, Deseret News <\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n

\u201cI needed a historian who could write as fast as a journalist.\u201d<\/p>\n

That\u2019s Barbara, reflecting on the first step in the process that resulted in the release last month of \u201cGame Changers: AJ Dybantsa, BYU and the Struggle for the Soul of Basketball.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI knew AJ was going to be … one-and-done (because he could go into the NBA at age 19),\u201d she says. \u201cWe had to publish by the start of basketball season.\u201d<\/p>\n

She found her writer in Matt Bowman, a history professor at Claremont Graduate University in California who authored \u201cThe Mormon People,\u201d a critically-acclaimed book published by Knopf in 2012. Bowman, Barbara\u2019s sources told her, had long been fascinated by the church\u2019s relationship with basketball.<\/p>\n

\u201cBasketball is intrinsically part of the church,\u201d he said to Barbara. \u201cThink about it, there\u2019s a basketball court in every LDS church building in the nation. What other church can say that?\u201d<\/p>\n

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Matthew Bowman, who co-authored the book \u201cGame Changers\u201d with Wayne LeCheminant, signs a copy of the book for Dale Rees, of Sandy, before an event held at Signature Books in Salt Lake City on Thursday, Dec. 18, 2025. <\/span>| Isaac Hale, Deseret News <\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n

So Bowman was all-in, although, since he also carries a full teaching load and has two kids at home and is working on two other book projects, he did have a problem with the six-month time frame Barbara gave him.<\/p>\n

\u201cCould I have a co-author?\u201d he asked.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s how Bowman\u2019s friend, and fellow basketball aficionado, Wayne LeCheminant, became involved.<\/p>\n

Matt and Wayne pack a lot of information into the book\u2019s 243 pages. Through the BYU\/church prism, they chart the evolution of college basketball, from the Wild, Wild West days when Walter Byers and the NCAA attempted to bring order to the chaos, to the current Wild, Wild West days when the NCAA has lost all control. They recount BYU\u2019s b-ball history, through the epochs of Mel Hutchins, Kresimir Cosic, Danny Ainge and Jimmer Fredette, right up to the present day of AJ. <\/p>\n

All this as a backdrop to the church\u2019s long love affair with basketball.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe can tell the history of the church through the lens of basketball,\u201d says Bowman. \u201cIt\u2019s the story of an American faith finding a sport that expresses values the church takes seriously, most essentially community and cooperation, and sharing that with the culture outside of itself.\u201d<\/p>\n

That\u2019s an historian\u2019s way of explaining why basketball courts are in every church building, and how AJ wound up at BYU.<\/p>\n

For her part, as Matt and Wayne were working to meet their deadline, Barbara went to work getting permission to put AJ\u2019s name, image and likeness on the cover. Through Dave McCann, a sportscaster and Deseret News columnist, she was put in touch with legendary sports agent Leonard Armato, who is advising the Dybantsas, who in turn introduced her to AJ\u2019s father Ace, his agent.<\/p>\n

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BYU forward AJ Dybansta poses with a copy of the book \u201cGame Changers\u201d after an NBA game between the Utah Jazz and the Los Angeles Lakers at the Delta Center in Salt Lake City on Thursday, Dec. 18, 2025. <\/span>| Isaac Hale, Deseret News <\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n

\u201cI know they\u2019re big shots; they\u2019re just going to shoo me away, a director of a small press in Utah,\u201d she says of the low expectations she had going in.<\/p>\n

\u201cBut they couldn\u2019t have been nicer. I worked with Ace closely, he\u2019s a really nice, kind, good guy, a quality person.\u201d<\/p>\n

The financial deal they struck was not made public, \u201cbut compared to all the other money they\u2019re making it\u2019s nothing,\u201d says Barbara, \u201ceven if the book is extremely successful, it\u2019s still small potatoes.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey\u2019re very picky about who they license with,\u201d she laughs, \u201cit\u2019s Nike, it\u2019s Red Bull, and it\u2019s Signature Books.\u201d<\/p>\n

When the book was released last month, Barbara met AJ after an early-season game in the Delta Center. <\/p>\n

\u201cI told him, \u2018I know you\u2019re going to make history at BYU,\u2019 and that made him smile; it was a big smile,\u201d she remembers, \u201cThen, when I looked back a moment later, he was on his phone texting. Just like my 19-year-old daughter.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cGame Changers\u201d is available wherever books are sold. There\u2019s also an audio version, narrated by former Jazz great Thurl Bailey.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n


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Nike. Red Bull. Signature Books. What do they have in common? They\u2019ve all signed endorsement deals with AJ Dybantsa. AJ, of course, is the 18-year-old multimillionaire playing basketball this season at BYU. His story is well known even among people who don\u2019t watch \u201cSportsCenter.\u201d Because it isn\u2019t every day the top recruit in the country … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":16049,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"","fifu_image_alt":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-16048","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.jubi24.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/How-BYU-phenom-AJ-Dybantsa-fits-into-the-churchs-long.JPG","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jubi24.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16048","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jubi24.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jubi24.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jubi24.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jubi24.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=16048"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.jubi24.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16048\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":16050,"href":"https:\/\/www.jubi24.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16048\/revisions\/16050"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jubi24.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/16049"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jubi24.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=16048"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jubi24.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=16048"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jubi24.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=16048"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}