AJ Dybantsa and His Dad Have Been Everywhere Together. Is D.C. Next?

What you’re about to read is not particularly normal. OK, it’s actually not normal at all. You see, NBA players (almost always) have agents. Players about to enter the NBA (almost always) have agents, too. AJ Dybantsa, however, is not your typical NBA-bound player because, among other reasons, Ace Dybantsa is not your typical basketball dad.

Ace runs the business of his son, full stop. And he does so with his chest out, his mouth grinning, his head often nodding as he talks — like, yes, world, if you want even the smallest piece of my superstar son, you’ll have to go straight through me.

The NBA draft is less than a week away, meaning AJ, a 6-foot-9 forward with tons of scoring ability, could be less than a week from going first off the board. He visited just two teams during the predraft process: the Wizards, who have the No. 1 pick, and the Jazz, who will choose second. His trip to Utah was shorter than his one to Washington, but only because he and his family are very familiar with Salt Lake City and the people running the Jazz, namely CEO Danny Ainge and owner Ryan Smith. They are both Brigham Young University grads and donors. AJ spent two years in their general airspace, including playing his lone college season at BYU.

Ace Dybantsa with BYU alum and Utah Jazz CEO Danny Ainge. Rob Gray/AP

So when they met this month, Jazz officials didn’t have to see if AJ planned to hire an agent. They already knew the deal. But according to Ace, the Wizards did ask if he would eventually bring on an agent to negotiate AJ’s rookie contract. Ace, sticking with his long-running strategy of keeping as much money in the family as possible, told them no, that wasn’t happening. (In his retelling, Ace makes sure to say the Wizards weren’t skeptical about this, only checking in case there was a change of heart. If you can believe it, he says each team is in love with AJ, just like everyone else.)

“I’m just doing what I believe is best for my son,” Ace told me of his unorthodox involvement. “You know how much AJ is going to make. Everyone and their mother knows how much AJ is going to make. Whoever doesn’t know, all they have to do is Google it. AJ is going to get a max rookie deal. You know that, I know that, so why should I hire an agent to tell me what I already know?”

Per Google, the max deal for the top pick in this year’s draft is just over $69 million for four years. Then the prescribed figures are lower for the second selection, then the third and so on. AJ, Ace reasons, doesn’t have to pay someone just to sign his paperwork.

Agents, you may not be surprised, are not so fond of that take. And there are coaches and executives who wonder if the father-son partnership could get messy, especially as AJ gets older. But there are others who have commended Ace’s efforts, saying it’s about time someone bucked the idea that an agent should get a set percentage of every player’s first contract.

This is the whole Ace experience, complex and brash, hard-charging and completely unfiltered. And soon, once AJ is drafted, Ace will be a main character in an NBA city, the franchise player’s hands-on dad. It’s an archetype with a modern twist, enabled by the name, image and likeness (NIL) era in college sports, which allowed AJ to make millions before turning pro, including while in high school. That’s why Ace has built tall walls around his son, wary of anyone who offers help while sticking their hand out for a cut.

People have grabbed at AJ like that since he was a high school sophomore, when he emerged like a lab-created prodigy, weaving through ankle-biting guards with his magnetic handle, dunking whenever he pleased. So along the way, Ace developed a saying for almost every situation, Daddy knows best being one of his favorites. If his speech patterns were broken into a pie chart, it would be about 30 percent sayings and jokes, like this sampling of his latest:

When I asked why the family recently hired a marketing team based in Paris and not in the U.S., Ace said: “Because AJ is an IBM. An International Black Man.” (Ace grew up in the Republic of Congo, moved to France in his teens, then immigrated to the Boston area in his early 20s, where he and his wife, Chelsea, raised AJ and their two daughters.) And after telling me AJ turned down an offer for his own podcast, I joked that maybe Ace should launch his own show — the bombastic sports dad peeling back the curtain — and he said: “Sure. On the 31st of June.” (About two minutes later, he made sure I knew there are only 30 days in the month.)

“He’s an extremely modern basketball parent because he has a business brain that’s always going, going, going,” said one NBA executive for a Western conference team, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he’s not permitted to talk publicly about draft-eligible players. “And he also seems to really love being Ace Dybantsa — which, hey, I would too if I were managing a player as talented as his son.”

As for where AJ will land, just about every recent report says the Wizards are down to him and Darryn Peterson, the 6-foot-6 guard from Kansas. And as for how the NBA views his dad’s role, a small anonymous survey of NBA execs revealed a consistent take on Ace: He’s the most involved parent in this draft, by their estimation, especially without an agent in the mix. But that would be more concerning, at least to the four of them, if Ace were as involved in basketball as he is in business. Ace, according to many of AJ’s past coaches, has never demanded his son change positions or be put in more pick-and-roll sets. Instead, he’s more likely to track how often AJ’s team or sponsors are sharing him on their social media accounts and ask for more exposure.

His general marketing approach with AJ is fairly simple. They have signed only a small handful of brand deals — Nike, Red Bull, Fanatics, all extremely lucrative — because they don’t want to dilute his value. But when it comes to interviews and social media, AJ is everywhere, which Ace believes has been good practice for dealing with reporters in the NBA. Plus, in the NIL era, social impressions often directly correlate to dollars made. Everything with AJ is by design.

And after hammering why AJ doesn’t need an agent some more, Ace listed off the circle around his son, as if to prove it’s not just him: an advisor in Leonard Armato, who was once Shaquille O’Neal’s agent; a financial advisor; a lawyer; the marketing team in Paris; a soon-to-be-hired public relations team; Ace’s manager; and a soon-to-be-hired assistant for Ace.

“And then I’m the CEO,” Ace said. “I can negotiate contracts. I’ve done it. I did a great contract with Nike. I did great contracts with Red Bull and Fanatics. AJ is happy with them. I’m happy with them. We like to keep everything in the family.”

You know when you’re on a call and you get a text and it buzzes against your ear? And then, despite trying to focus, because our attention spans have been ground to whatever’s after dust, you sneak a peek at the message — just in case, you know, it’s urgent or something? Earlier this week, in the middle of a phone interview for this story, that happened and I caved. I peeked.

The message was from Ace, it turned out, a photo of Wizards and Jazz shirts laid side-by-side on a hardwood floor. Then I snapped back to listening to … Ace, who had fired off the text in the middle of an answer, never missing a beat. So once he finished the thought, I asked why he sent that message, especially, um, right now.

“Because on Tuesday, I will finally put one of them on,” he said. “And then you can have the other!”