Can a man fly? That all depends on whether you could define what BYU product and basketball revelation AJ Dybantsa does on a basketball court, "human". By all accounts, he's succeeded the limitations of his physical form and evolved to that of a better, more perfected image.
Human beings, a notoriously land-bound species, have crawled upon the Earth since the dawn of time -- we're talking the Book of Genesis for you bible-heads in the audience -- until one man, Dr. James Naismith, questioned why we choose not to look to the skies. Nailing peach baskets into the walls and tilting the chins of a generation heavenward, basketball changed the way that we understand our reality on a very fundamental level.
Leaping, bounding, and soaring to the goals on either end of the floor, athletes have grown from life below the backboard to seeing the suspended wall of tempered safety glass at eye level. AJ Dybantsa is perhaps the culmination of our species' evolutionary efforts, and he proved that (again) at the NBA Draft Combine, leading the entire field in maximum vertical leap with a 42-inch rocket ship to the number-one spot.
AJ is unreal man pic.twitter.com/9fHfXOhP8a
— Matt (@sixringsofsteeI) May 12, 2026
That's just the icing on the cake for the AJ Dybantsa experience, as a player who certainly has proved capable of doing damage via air strikes -- in clear air and heavy congestion alike -- but that is far from the primary reason why NBA teams view him as the obvious pick for at number one this year, despite incredibly appealing options like Darryn Peterson, Cameron Boozer (oddly absent from the top 13), and Caleb Wilson.
No, Dybantsa is much more than a leaper. He's a scoring savant at just 19 years old, with the scoring appetite of a player well beyond his experience. He understands the game at a level that the average or even well-above average players cannot, getting his teammates involved and creating offense from thin air on regular occassions.
Sure, he needs to build out his frame a touch more, and heed defensive coaching to reach his peak as a pro, but NBA teams will not ignore when a player of Dybantsa's size, length, and athleticism led the nation in scoring as a freshman and dragged an injury-riddled BYU team as far as he did.
Dybantsa was a big winner at the combine.
I'd also like to take a brief moment to recognize the incredible verticals of Andrej Stojakovic, a player that Mark Pope recruited heavily while he was still at BYU, and Bennet Stirtz, two players whose most notable qualities were likewise not their vertical leaping ability, but strong showings in that regard could help boost their draft stock for NBA teams anxious to wring out every last drop of value for their mid-to-late first-round draft picks.
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